150th anniversary

Remembering CU’s brave one from the Red Scare

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 20:16:09 +0000

Remembering CU’s brave one from the Red Scare Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/08/2024 - 14:16

Bradley Worrell

Caught up in anti-communist hysteria following World War II, former �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder student Dalton Trumbo today is recognized as a fierce proponent of free speech, with a fountain outside the University Memorial Center named in his honor

This summer marks the 75th anniversary of a secret FBI file becoming public—one that named well-known Hollywood figures, including screenwriter and former �鶹��Ѱ�� student Dalton Trumbo (A&S ex’28), as members of the Communist Party.

Although Trumbo and several of his Hollywood colleagues had been accused of being communists and forced to testify before Congress’ House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) two years prior, the existence of the FBI file had been secret until its release during the espionage trial of Judith Coplon, an analyst with the U.S. Department of Justice. The file, based on information from confidential informants, named not only Hollywood writers, directors and actors, but also academics from universities across the United States. Its release set off a period of paranoia known as the second Red Scare.

The 1949 release of the formerly secret FBI report represented a continuation of a long-term investigation by the HUAC, which was first formed in 1938 to investigate individuals for subversive activities, particularly those related to the Communist Party. Widely publicized congressional hearings beginning in 1947 and focusing on the film industry ensnared several screenwriters and directors, the so-called Hollywood 10, which included Trumbo.

Bronson Hilliard, senior director, academic communications, for the Office of Strategic Relations and Communications at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, wrote an editorial encouraging the �鶹��Ѱ��regents to rename of the UMC fountain in honor of Dalton Trumbo.

Once Hollywood’s premier screenwriter, the author of such classics as “A Man to Remember,” “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” and “The Brave One,” Trumbo was forced into the shadows after being blacklisted. He continued to write scripts under pen names for years before escaping the blacklist in the early 1960s, finally able to take credit for such famous screenplays as “Exodus” and “Spartacus.”

Seeking to recognize Trumbo for his fierce defense of the First Amendment, as well as his talents as a lauded screenwriter, a group of �鶹��Ѱ��students including Lewis Cardinal and Kristina Baumli petitioned the �鶹��Ѱ��Board of Regents in 1993 to name the fountain in front of the UMC in honor of Trumbo.

As the entertainment editor of the Colorado Daily at the time, Bronson Hilliard wrote an editorial encouraging the regents to rename of the fountain. Hilliard, who has a 40-year association with the university, first as a student and then working in various editorial and communications roles with the university, now serves as the senior director, academic communications, for the Office of Strategic Relations and Communications at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

In a recent interview with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine, Hilliard reflected on his admiration for Trumbo, his desire to see the �鶹��Ѱ��regents recognize Trumbo, his recollections of meeting actor Kirk Douglas and notable entertainment figures who attended the fountain dedication ceremony, and his thoughts on why Trumbo’s legacy remains important today. His responses were lightly edited and condensed for space.

Question: Do you think it’s fair to call Trumbo the most prominent former �鶹��Ѱ��student to find big success in Hollywood?

Hilliard: It would have to be Trumbo and Robert Redford together. Trumbo was certainly the first. All through the 1940s, it’s safe to say Trumbo was not only the best screenwriter in Hollywood, but he was the highest paid and he was one of the most prolific. He was the kind of guy who could write a screenplay in a very short amount of time, which made him in high demand. He was also a great re-writer of screen scripts. He was a feisty guy, but he was a brilliant writer.

Question: In 1947, Trumbo and other members of the Hollywood 10 got called before Congress for hearings on the supposed communist infiltration of Hollywood. Others in the entertainment industry cooperated with Congress; why do you think Trumbo and his compatriots refused to do so, even when faced with going to prison?

Hilliard: Some named names, and some didn’t. Trumbo wouldn’t have it. Trumbo, his value was, he’s not going to turn his back on his friends. He was loyal to his friends. I don’t think he was loyal to the Communist Party, although he was a member at one point. But Trumbo was not going to turn his back on his friends, so he basically told the committee they could stick it. …

The fountain court outside the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder University Memorial Center was renamed in honor of Dalton Trumbo in 1993. (Photo: Glenn Asakawa/�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder)

Trumbo and the other Hollywood 10 had a code of honor with each other. They had a certain set of values they believed in as writers and as creative people. That’s what I admired him for, even though I didn’t agree with them (the Hollywood 10) about everything.

One of my other heroes is (actor and director) John Huston. He formed a group called the Committee in Support of the First Amendment. In his biography, Huston talked about the fact he didn’t agree with or like all of these guys—he thought some of them were very doctrinaire—but he thought they had a right to believe what they wanted to under the First Amendment without going to prison. He believed they had the right to believe whatever they believed, even though some of them were a pain in the ass.

Question: While Congress grilled the Hollywood 10 about their supposed communist sympathies, it was actually the Hollywood studio heads who had them blacklisted, correct?

Hilliard: Yes, and there’s an interesting story there. Most of the major film studio executives in the 1940s were Jewish, and they had to go the extra mile to show that they were true Americans, because of antisemitism and anti-immigration sentiments, which were alive and well then as now.

Some of the Hollywood studio heads held out for as long as they could to try to persuade Congress to back down a little bit. And then finally it was, ‘OK, let us handle this.’ And they handled it by creating the blacklist. …

This debate is an essential American debate, and it rises up at different times. And the rise of digital media culture has resurrected a whole new set of discussions about what are the limits of free speech. What are the limits of free expression? When does expression become conduct or does expression become conduct?

The blacklist raised the question for the first time on a large scale in American history.

Question: How did Trumbo overcome being blacklisted?

Hilliard: Kirk Douglas always said he broke the blacklist by crediting “Spartacus” to Trumbo. I actually think that’s not true; I think (director) Otto Preminger did it first with “Exodus.”

But a lot of Hollywood careers never recovered. And that’s also true of academics. A lot of academics were purged at that same time and were not able to return to academia. It was tragic. And none of these people represented a threat to the United States.

Blacklist history

Former �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of Physics faculty member Frank Oppenheimer was called before the HUAC in 1949 and eventually forced to resign his position at the University of Minnesota. Learn more about how �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder supported him in joining the physics faculty.

Trumbo was luckier than others. He took his family to Mexico and worked there, and he ghost wrote low-budget films and was able to eke out a living during the blacklist.

Question: When the �鶹��Ѱ��regents officially dedicated the fountain to Trumbo in 1993, you were there?

Hilliard: I was. On the day of the event, I met Kirk Douglas in the basement of the UMC over by the bowling alley. He was coming out of the bathroom, and some people were escorting him. I had been off doing some little task, and I literally just sort of bumped into him in the UMC.

I was introduced to him by one of the organizers of the event, and he actually called me by my first name—someone had apparently mentioned me to him. He said, ‘Bronson, it’s such a pleasure to meet you.’ He looked me right in the eye and he said, ‘Thank you so much for your efforts in advocating for this.’

Dalton Trumbo was renowned for writing in the bathtub. (Photo: Mitzi Trumbo)

And he said something very funny about Trumbo. A reporter asked him what Trumbo would think about all this. And he said, ‘Well, Trumbo would completely love this. He would be holding court with reporters, and he would immediately refer to it as ‘my fountain.’ …

And incidentally, Dalton Trumbo’s widow, Cleo, was there, and his son, Christopher, and one of his daughters. So was Ring Lardner Jr., who wrote the screenplay for “M.A.S.H.” the movie and also was blacklisted, and Jean Rouverol Butler, who was a screenwriter and who was married to (screenwriter) Hugo Butler—the couple were close friends and associates with members of the Hollywood 10.

But it was a magical day. Everybody got up and made speeches about Trumbo, about the importance of free speech, about the need to be vigilant about free speech and about the role Trumbo had played, along with the Hollywood 10, in defying congressional inquisitors.

I was greatly moved by the whole thing.

Question: Hollywood recognized Trumbo in 2015 with the film “Trumbo,” which examined his life and the sacrifices he made for his beliefs. What did you think of the film?

Hilliard: I loved it. I thought (actor) Bryan Cranston did a great job, based upon the two biographies of Trumbo that I’ve read. Cranston really captured both the idealism of Trumbo and the idea of Trumbo as a businessman. He was a wheeler dealer. He knew the Hollywood system and how to make money. The film captured the way he was hustling to write screenplays for the low-budget film company (after he was blacklisted).

Trumbo was this great coming together of the practical and the ideal. He knew the ins and outs of the business of Hollywood … but he also had a tremendous set of principles and ideals that undergirded it all. It was great to see those two qualities embodied in a single person.

Dalton Trumbo, seen here in his mugshot, served 10 months in the federal correctional institution in Ashland, Kentucky, in 1950; he was convicted of contempt of Congress. (Photo: Federal Bureau of Prisons)

Trumbo is truly one of my heroes. In fact, in my office, I have a picture of him on my bookshelf, so he’s with me every day.

What are your thoughts on how Trumbo is viewed today, in retrospect?

Hilliard: He’s a reminder that it takes a really tough and resilient person to carry forward your beliefs to the point of profound personal disadvantage. … I think today we have a lot of people who are keyboard warriors, and they want to get on social media and get outraged, but they don’t put any personal principles on the line to do that.

Trumbo was willing to go to jail and to endure not only personal sacrifice for himself, but his entire family. That was an ordeal for the Trumbo family to support him while he was in jail and to make ends meet. And then he had to rebuild his career.

But that’s what’s to love about the people who are willing to put their lives and their careers on the line for what they believe in and who are not willing to sell out their friends. Those are people worth admiring.

And the sad thing is, I don’t think people think about Dalton Trumbo today. I think they should. I think every activist, of any persuasion, ought to know the life of Dalton Trumbo.

And I think we could all, as Americans, use a dose of the fortitude that Trumbo had, and the combining of the practical and the ideal the way he did to me is just amazing. We could use more of that practical mindedness. Trumbo accepted the consequences of his politics and his idealism—and he set about trying to have a great life anyway. And he did it. That’s more than admirable.

Top image: Dalton Trumbo speaks before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in Washington, D.C. Oct. 28, 1947. (Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

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Forever Buffs family hails sixth generation (and counting!) of �鶹��Ѱ��students

Anonymous — Wed, 08 May 2024 15:28:09 +0000

Forever Buffs family hails sixth generation (and counting!) of �鶹��Ѱ��students Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/08/2024 - 09:28

Rachel Sauer

As Ainsley Baker accepts her integrative physiology degree this week, she joins a family history that dates back to 1886

It wasn’t so much rebellion, Debbie Baker admits now, but stubbornness. She grew up hearing endless stories about the �鶹��Ѱ��, and not just from her mother, but stories going back generations.

She remembers her grandfather telling her, “Of course you’re going to CU” and thinking, “Of course?”

Ainsley Baker as a 3-year-old �鶹��Ѱ��Buffs fan (left) and preparing to receive her bachelor's degree in integrative physiology this week.

So, she went to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth for her freshman year. And she loved it—had a wonderful time, made great friends, “but I never quite felt grounded,” she remembers.

She knew, in a way she couldn’t really put into words, that she needed to transfer to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, which she did for her sophomore year. In a geology class that year, riding the bus on a field trip to the canyon, she remembers looking out and seeing the spine of the Flatirons stretching to the sky, seeing what seemed like the entire Front Range spreading before her to the horizon and “feeling a rush of ‘I’m grounded, this is where I need to be,’” she says.

In coming to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, she’d come home—the fifth consecutive generation of her family to attend the university. This week, Debbie’s daughter Ainsley is donning a mortar board and gown to celebrate earning a bachelor’s degree in integrative physiology, becoming the sixth generation of her family to attend �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

“At this point, I think �鶹��Ѱ��is pretty much in our DNA,” Debbie says with a laugh. “My husband and I have tried really hard not to make our kids feel like this is where they have to go …”

“… but it’s where we’ve ended up wanting to go,” Ainsley adds. Her next-younger brother, Brennan, just completed his freshman year at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder studying quantitative finance.

A family history

Edith Corbin (left, with father Victor Noxon behind her) graduated �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in 1918; her son, David Corbin (right, with wife, Mary Jane, and their daughter, Nancy), graduated in 1948. Nancy would go on to study fine art at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

The family’s roots through �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder are almost a century-and-a-half deep, stretching back to 1886 and the university’s fourth graduating class. When Victor Noxon, Debbie’s great-great-grandfather, began his engineering studies, the university consisted of one building—Old Main. His graduating class totaled six—five men and one woman.

Noxon, who was grandfather of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alum and astronaut Scott Carpenter and who started the Boulder County Farmer and Miner newspaper, was father to three sons and six daughters—all of whom attended �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. Among them was Edith Corbin, Debbie’s great-grandmother, who graduated in 1918 and became a nurse. Her son, David Corbin, graduated in electrical engineering in 1948, and his daughter Nancy studied fine art.

“Both my parents went here,” says Nancy, now Nancy Heaney, and her daughter Debbie adds, “In fact, she was born one month before graduation.”

Nancy’s parents courted on the bridge over Varsity Pond and, after they married, lived in a Quonset hut on campus.

So, as Debbie walked around campus as a student, so many spots held memories from the stories she’s heard all her life. She’d grown up in Littleton and came to Boulder and the university campus occasionally for football games or the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, but it was different now that she was a student studying communication and pursuing an elementary education certificate. She was adding her own stories to the growing family chain of lore.

She was part of Kappa Alpha Theta, which had been her grandmother’s sorority. She met her husband, Mark, in Kittredge Hall and auditioned for women’s choir in Macky Auditorium: “I sang in women’s choir for one semester, then in co-ed choir, and we always sang in Macky for Christmas,” Debbie recalls. “That was always such a special experience, and I remember my grandfather would come and just beam.”

Mark and Debbie Baker kiss on the former spiral stairs at Old Main on one of the last nights of their senior year (left) and recreate the moment almost two decades later (right).

She and Mark, who represents the second generation of his family to graduate �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder (plus a grandfather who taught in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s U.S. Navy ROTC program), played on champion intramural Ultimate Frisbee teams on campus. At the end of their senior year in 1996, they got an old film camera and ran around campus one evening issuing dares and taking pictures: splashing in a fountain, walking on the shelves in Norlin Library, kissing on the old spiral staircase at Old Main.

“Everywhere I look (on campus) there’s a memory,” Debbie says.

‘�鶹��Ѱ��has felt like home’

When Ainsley—who is the oldest of four, with three younger brothers—was thinking about college, she considered a few out-of-state possibilities, “but not seriously,” she says. Even though her parents never pressured her to attend �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, she’d grown up hearing their stories and attending occasional football games, so by the time she needed to commit to a university, “I was pretty excited to go to CU.”

Her first year coincided with the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, so her classes were virtual. She completed chemistry labs in her bathroom and remembers concerning her roommates when she burned aluminum foil with magnesium citrate.

The nearby mountains and trails helped keep her grounded that year, and when in-person restrictions began lifting her sophomore year, she was ready to dive in: as a Young Life leader, playing intramural soccer, attending football games, playing cross-campus miniature golf with tennis balls, storming the field after CU’s win against Nebraska. She even appeared in a background shot of the documentary about Coach Prime.

Brennan, Debbie and Ainsley Baker (left to right) and Nancy Heaney (right) represent three of six generations who have studied at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. (Photo: Kylie Clarke)

And when it was time for Brennan to consider college, he also looked into a few out-of-state options, but like his sister, it was almost a foregone conclusion.

“A lot of friends told me, ‘You’re going to CU,’ and it’s actually where I wanted to go,” he says, adding that it’s close enough to home and family in Highlands Ranch, but just far enough away “that I can have my own experience.”

“It’s been really fun to have this time with Brennan here,” Ainsley says. “We would have lunch every Wednesday, and I’d get texts from my friends whenever they had a Brennan sighting on campus.”

Like Ainsley, Brennan learned to balance school and a social life—playing intramural soccer with his sister, getting active in Young Life, riding a bike to campus in the middle of a snowstorm, getting trapped in an elevator with his friends and singing songs to pass the time until firefighters could pry the doors open. He also is part of the Dean's Fellows Program and President's Leadership Class, as was his father.

He’ll be cheering for Ainsley as she accepts her diploma this week—she actually finished class in December and is working at Boulder Community Hospital while she applies to nursing school—and trying not to pressure their two younger brothers about attending CU.

“I think our family has been really lucky to have this connection to such a wonderful place,” Debbie says. “For generations, �鶹��Ѱ��has felt like home.”

Unless otherwise noted, photos courtesy Debbie Baker

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder? Show your support.

As Ainsley Baker accepts her integrative physiology degree this week, she joins a family history that dates back to 1886.

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Frank Oppenheimer, Robert’s brother, honed physics teaching at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Jan 2024 16:05:40 +0000

Frank Oppenheimer, Robert’s brother, honed physics teaching at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/25/2024 - 09:05

Rachel Sauer

In a little-known chapter of university history, the Manhattan Project scientist taught for several years in the Department of Physics, and his legacy appears in the fabric of the department

Al Bartlett, the legendary �鶹��Ѱ�� physics professor, was a judge for the combined Colorado-Wyoming high school science fair in the mid-1950s. One year at the awards banquet, he later recalled to author K.C. Cole, many of the winners suddenly were from Pagosa Springs High School.

Pagosa Springs? Where even was that? As each Pagosa winner was announced, the faces of students from bigger, more prestigious Denver high schools fell further, Bartlett recalled. Many of the Pagosa students were Hispanic, many from “ordinary origins” and many bussed to the competition by their science teacher.

As for that teacher, Bartlett would later learn it was someone with whom he shared a background—working on the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb. And someone who, within several years, would become his colleague in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of Physics.

Paul Beale, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professor of physics, remembers Bartlett describing how he asked someone about this new science teacher and was informed the gentleman’s name was “Oppen-something.”

Frank Oppenheimer (left) was played by Dylan Arnold (right) in Christopher Nolan's Oscar-nominated film Oppenheimer. (Frank Oppenheimer photo: Bettman Archive; Dylan Arnold photo: Universal Pictures)

Ahhh. Well, OK then, that explained it. Oppenheimer. Frank Oppenheimer, younger brother of J. Robert Oppenheimer, brilliant particle physicist, Manhattan Project scientist, blacklisted as a communist and, in a history not widely known, onetime �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder faculty member.

Since the summer 2023 release of Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer, which on Tuesday earned 13 Academy Award nominations, the surname has become popularly synonymous with science. While Robert may be the more famous brother—and the film’s subject, due to directing the Los Alamos Laboratory when the Manhattan Project was housed there—Frank’s scientific legacy runs similarly deep.

In the several years he taught physics at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, Frank Oppenheimer not only made science exciting and accessible, but he initiated the creation of the Library of Experiments. This library allowed instructors greater freedom in tailoring physics instruction, getting away from the “do these steps and this should happen” approach, and allowing students hands-on learning.

There were no “black boxes, no gimmicks, no contrivances to make an experiment work in accordance with theory,” recalls Jerry Leigh, who was hired at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder to work with Oppenheimer on the Library of Experiments. “Students could apply textbook principles to an apparatus directly, and ‘see’ the principles contained therein.”

It was an exciting way to learn science, Leigh says, and Oppenheimer was excited about science.

A winding path

By the time Oppenheimer arrived at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in 1959, he had already helped develop the bomb that ended World War II, been branded a communist, sold a Van Gogh painting to buy a ranch and guided a high school of fewer than 300 students to state science fair glory. Among other things, of course.

Following the war and his work on the Manhattan Project, Oppenheimer accepted a position teaching physics at the University of Minnesota. However, he was “outed” as a communist in a 1947 Washington Times-Herald article and eventually called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1949.

He initially denied any communist affiliation, but eventually testified that he and his wife, Jackie, had been members of the American Communist Party for about three years in the late 1930s, when they lived in California and were active in efforts to desegregate a public swimming pool in Pasadena.

As a result of his HUAC testimony, Oppenheimer was pressured to resign his position at the University of Minnesota, was denied his passport and could not get a job anywhere working in physics. He was understandably angry, and noted in a letter to his friend, esteemed physicist Robert Wilson, “At the moment it seems that all organizations that men create are either impotent or monsters."

However, admitting that he “acted badly” by not better explaining himself to the HUAC, Oppenheimer further wrote, “I think if one does not try to explain what one believes in and still pretends to be an intellectual, then soon one ceases to believe in anything."

Frank Oppenheimer demonstrates a gyroscope at Pagosa Springs High School (left) and uses a microscope in 1967. (Left photo: Stanely Fowler, Oppenheimer's former student; right photo: Bill Johnson/The Denver Post)

Oppenheimer’s father had been a passionate art collector and from him Oppenheimer inherited, among other works, the Van Gogh that he sold to buy a 1,500-acre ranch near Pagosa Springs in southern Colorado. Frank and Jackie, and their son and daughter, ranched cattle for about 10 years, becoming good neighbors and active in the community, Cole wrote in her book Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and His Astonishing Exploratorium.

When a teaching position opened at Pagosa Springs High School, Oppenheimer, who earned a PhD in physics from Caltech, seemed right for it but didn’t have state teaching credentials. The community, Cole wrote, was appalled that the state wouldn’t give him a license to teach, so he was granted temporary licensure while taking correspondence courses in education.

He wrote in a research paper for his credentials, “I am certain that mathematicians must frequently run into some object that they want to play with or investigate much as one is always tempted to play with magnets or gyroscopes or Silly Putty.” It foreshadowed his later work to help evolve science education so that it was fun, hands-on and playful.

Excited about teaching

Oppenheimer earned his full teaching credential in 1957 and at that point was teaching physics, chemistry, biology and general science in a community of about 850 people that hadn’t previously had a dedicated science teacher. Not long thereafter, Oppenheimer’s students began arriving at the University of Colorado and wowing their professors, physicist Hal Zirin told Cole.

In summer 1958, Oppenheimer and his family moved to Boulder in part so he could position himself for opportunities at CU. He helped develop a new National Science Foundation curriculum and taught in the Summer Institute for High School Physics Teachers. He also taught special physics classes throughout Jefferson County.

During this time, Cole wrote, Oppenheimer “realized that the teachers themselves had to be excited about the material and engaged in discovery or they'd never be able to inspire, or even adequately teach, their students.”

After returning to Pagosa Springs so his son could complete his sophomore year of high school, Oppenheimer’s strategy of positioning himself for entry into �鶹��Ѱ��faculty paid off, and in 1959 he was offered a position as a research associate. His past in the American Communist Party continued haunting him, though, and several members of the Board of Regents attempted to block his appointment.

Fortunately, Wesley Brittin, who was then chair of the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of Physics, was strongly on Oppenheimer’s side, showing tremendous courage in the face of intimidating opposition, Beale says. Brittin sought letters of recommendation from such esteemed physicists as Hans Bethe, George Gamow and Victor Weisskopf. During the Board of Regents meeting to determine Oppenheimer’s fate at CU, Bartlett and several of his physics colleagues waited anxiously outside the door, Bartlett recalled to Cole.

Oppenheimer became an associate professor in 1961 and a full professor in 1964.

While at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, Frank Oppenheimer created a video series explaining the various experiments in the Library of Experiments. See the entire series here.

Building a Library of Experiments

Oppenheimer was already established in the physics faculty when Allan Franklin, now a professor emeritus, joined the faculty as a young scientist. Though he could easily have been in awe of the famous—some might say infamous—physicist, Franklin recalls Oppenheimer as kind and generous to an early career scientist.

“He invited us to his home on High Street in downtown Boulder,” Franklin remembers. “He was quite a modest guy, and I never remember him being bitter about how badly he’d been treated.”

Franklin recalls a friend telling him about complimenting Oppenheimer on the collection of art hanging on his living room walls, noting to Oppenheimer that a particular painting was “’the best copy of Picasso I’ve ever seen.’ And Frank says, ‘It’s not a copy.’”

Oppenheimer also never expressed a sense that he existed in his famous brother’s shadow, Franklin says: “J.R. was a theorist but Frank was experimental. He was really interested in teaching, and he completely revised our sophomore modern physics labs.”

Those revisions would evolve into the Library of Experiments, which created a “cafeteria” approach to physics experiments. Rather than every student in class doing the same experiments, a student could choose the required number of experiments that interested them the most.

Leigh recalls that Oppenheimer had clear ideas about what he wanted an experiment to be. “I was to assist teaching assistants with growing classes, devising and fabricating fixes for (Oppenheimer’s) often crudely built apparatus and repair lab documentation written hastily without editing,” Leigh says.

Learn more

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder has a broad history of recruiting former Los Alamos scientists. Former �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder President Robert L. Stearns, through his work in a Pacific War Targeting unit, was assigned to the Atomic Bomb Targeting Committee in 1945, which may have been when he came in contact with Los Alamos physicists, mathematicians and scholars. After the war ended, David Hawkins and Al Bartlett came to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in 1947 and 1950, respectively. But the real flow of former Los Alamos scientists came later, under presidents Ward Darley, Quigg Newton and George Smiley: George Gamow in 1956; Stanisław Ulam and Edward Condon in 1963; and Robert D. Richtmyer in 1964. These �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder presidents were committed to bringing in quality faculty, regardless of criticism. In addition, after Sputnik and rising Congressional and grant support for space sciences, support for physics, mathematics and engineering at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder grew considerably.

—David Hays, University Libraries archivist

“At first, Frank was somewhat distant, but friendly. Students were grouped at each experiment in twos or threes, so Frank circulated among the groups and politely offered suggestions and asked challenging questions of students, yet never intruding or confronting them.

“Over time, Frank began to approach me saying, ‘There is something want to show you.’ He would demonstrate some apparatus, pointing out items in need of improvement. The first involved a Polaroid camera that was mounted on a heavy stand that was tilted to provide data. The motion being studied was sinusoidal, and tilting the camera abruptly changed the field of view so the data was often bad. So, I had a shop make a mount that changed the camera’s position sinusoidally. Data became perfect and Frank beamed with joy.”

In another experiment, a steel ball was held up by an electromagnet and then dropped, providing a measurement of Earth's gravitation. The ball often stuck to the magnet instead of falling, so Leigh glued a small fiber washer to the magnet and fixed the problem, “and Frank glowed with satisfaction,” Leigh says.

Oppenheimer envisioned experiments for radioactive decay, the Doppler effect and Millikan oil drops, among many other elements of physics, and received national acclaim for the Library of Experiments while he was at CU.

"His 'library' of sophisticated science toys operated in typical Frank style—which is to say with a large measure of anarchy," Cole wrote. "He insisted on not having a lab manual, for instance, because he thought it would be too confining and inhibit free exploration. He liked to work with students one on one, encouraging them to ask questions and always making suggestions: 'Why don't you try this?'"

Having a lab with Oppenheimer was an incomparable educational experience, even for a professional, Bartlett told Cole. "He was personally setting an example of how fascinating it was to be engrossed in the excitement of learning physics. His enthusiasm was contagious. He seemed to take so much pleasure getting other people to see the interesting things in what he was doing."

In retrospect, it’s easy to see that Oppenheimer was testing ideas for what would become the Exploratorium, a hands-on public learning laboratory for all ages in San Francisco, California. Prior to founding it in 1969, Oppenheimer was awarded the first of two Guggenheim Fellowships in 1965 to study the history of physics and research bubble chambers at University College London. (The University of Colorado granted Oppenheimer a series of leaves until he became professor emeritus in 1979.)

Left photo: Frank Oppenheimer (right) with his older brother, J. Robert Oppenheimer. Right photo: Frank Oppenheimer in his later years in San Francisco; he died in 1985. (Left photo: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives; right photo: K.C. Cole/courtesy Houghton Mifflin)

A legacy of learning

Oppenheimer built the Exploratorium into a nationally and internationally recognized center for public science, never losing his curiosity or enthusiasm for science, Franklin says. He recalls visiting Oppenheimer and his wife in San Francisco around 1970.

“They had a house near the top of Lombard Street, and when I was staying with them I remember seeing an ad in the paper that Jefferson Airplane were going to be playing at the Fillmore West,” Franklin says. “I asked Frank if he wanted to go and he said yes, which shouldn’t have been surprising because he was always curious and open to new things. We were older than the rest of the audience, and people were looking at us like we were narcs. But they played a 30-minute version of ‘White Rabbit’ at that show, and I remember Frank was really into it.”

Despite Oppenheimer’s relatively short time at CU, his legacy is woven into the fabric of the Department of Physics. “Teaching and learning have been central for this department forever," Beale says. "Like when Frank was here, we have students doing hands-on, real science—publishable stuff when they’re even freshmen and sophomores. One example from the COVID era was something students could work on online, using this huge dataset available from NASA that had not been combed through at a level it needed to be. So, students were doing that real-world data analysis and then having a published paper in an astrophysical journal about solar flares at the end of it.

“I tell students when I first meet them coming out of high school that science is a human endeavor; there has to be room for trial and error. If you do an experiment and get what you expect every time, you haven’t really learned anything or done science. I think that’s why we wanted Frank here in the first place, because he strongly believed that, too.”

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In a little-known chapter of university history, the Manhattan Project scientist taught for several years in the Department of Physics, and his legacy appears in the fabric of the department.

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From renderings to reality: The renovated Roe Green Theatre opens

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 23:10:18 +0000

From renderings to reality: The renovated Roe Green Theatre opens Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/06/2023 - 16:10

Allison Nitch

'The arts give joy and meaning to life, and I’m so pleased that Roe Green has chosen to support �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and the surrounding community in such a creative and meaningful way,' says Chancellor Phil DiStefano

With the grand opening of the renovated Roe Green Theatre on Nov. 3, the university has ushered in a new era for �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Department of Theatre & Dance.

To celebrate the theater’s opening, the department hosted a celebratory ribbon-cutting featuring remarks from campus and university leadership—as well as the theater’s namesake, Roe Green—ahead of the opening night performance of Working, A Musical.

The state-of-the-art renovations were made possible with a gift from arts patron, philanthropist and alumna Roe Green (Comm, Thtr’70) in 2021. Formerly known as the University Theatre, the iconic theater was renamed in recognition of Green’s generosity.

At the top of the page: Roe Green, an arts patron, philanthropist and �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumna, cuts the ceremonial ribbon for the newly renovated Roe Green Theatre. She is flanked by Chancellor Philip DiStefano (left) and Bud Coleman, the Roe Green Professor of Theatre and associate dean of faculty affairs and initiatives in the College of Arts and Sciences. Above: Green enjoys a moment at the doors of the theater. (�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder photos by Casey A. Cass)

“The arts give joy and meaning to life, and I’m so pleased that Roe Green has chosen to support �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and the surrounding community in such a creative and meaningful way,” said �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano.

Innovation by design

Originally built in 1904 as the campus library on what would become the Norlin Quadrangle, the theater’s last major update was completed more than 30 years ago. According to the Campus Master Plan, a major addition in 1985 included new studios and classrooms for the Division of Dance. In 1989, the older sections were renovated, and a new stage house was added to provide a backstage and wings for the existing theater.

This time around, improving the theater-going experience through advanced acoustics and audience comfort were the key renovation goals. This included adding a near-silent air-handling system, improved stage lighting, optimized acoustic-speaker placement and faceted surfaces that clearly reflect sound from the stage to the audience.

“Our brilliant architects from Architectural Workshop not only achieved this goal—they were also able to improve the positions for theatrical lighting and speakers, the air handling and the overall aesthetics of the space,” said Bud Coleman, the Roe Green Professor of Theatre and associate dean of faculty affairs and initiatives in the College of Arts and Sciences.

“This is modern acoustical science at work—and the impacts are profound,” said Jonathan Spencer, assistant professor of lighting design, in a video tour of the renovated theater.

Embracing the arts

Green’s record-breaking $5 million gift—the largest ever to the Department of Theatre & Dance—was announced in 2021 and welcomed students and the community back to campus after pandemic restrictions.

“The arts are what make us human,” said Green when asked why supporting live performance matters. When budgets get tight, she said, “The first thing the schools take away are the arts. It should be the last thing they take away!”

In addition to the theater’s sweeping physical upgrades, Green’s gift also establishes endowed funds for student scholarships, theater maintenance and “launch” events designed to kick-start students’ careers.

The arts are what make us human,” said Green when asked why supporting live performance matters. When budgets get tight, she said, “The first thing the schools take away are the arts. It should be the last thing they take away!”

“Through her generous philanthropy, many more students, faculty, staff and community members will be able to embrace the life-changing power of theater and dance,” said DiStefano.

One of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s largest arts donors to date, Green previously established the campus's Roe Green Theatre Artist Residency Program and the theater department’s first endowed faculty chair.

Transforming lives, transforming the future

The renovated theater’s opening coincided with the debut of Working, A Musical—a celebration of the unsung heroes of everyday life, such as the schoolteacher, phone operator, waitress, millworker, mason and homemaker. In CU’s production, this classic has been updated for a modern age, featuring new interviews with Colorado workers and new songs by Tony Award-winning composer Lin-Manuel Miranda, as well as favorites by Stephen Schwartz, Craig Carnelia, James Taylor and Micki Grant.

Based on Studs Terkel’s best-selling book of interviews with American workers, the production runs through Nov. 12 and is the 2023–24 Roe Green Production. This program is funded by the Roe Green Visiting Theatre Artist Fund, which allows the Department of Theatre & Dance to invite professional guest artists to campus annually to work with �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder students.

Coleman said Green’s generous gifts are truly an investment in the future of live performance at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

“Roe’s endowment will mean that the theater will continue to have funding to make necessary changes to stay current with new technologies, and will also provide scholarships for students to pursue the study of theater,” he said.

“Roe’s conviction in the power of theater to transform lives inspires us to work harder, work better and work smarter.”

Additional funding support was provided by the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Graduate School Professional Master’s Program in Experience Design, the University of Colorado Foundation and the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of Theatre & Dance.

"The arts give joy and meaning to life, and I’m so pleased that Roe Green has chosen to support �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and the surrounding community in such a creative and meaningful way,” said �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Chancellor Phil DiStefano.

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Teaching Russian at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder was not her plan

Anonymous — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 22:37:19 +0000

Teaching Russian at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder was not her plan Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/31/2023 - 16:37

Clint Talbott

Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg was born in China, detained in World War II Japan and fully embraced her American life; a scholarship named for her describes her life in 54 words. Here is the rest of the story

Getting to know Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg was “like peeling an onion,” a longtime friend says. Each layer revealed another staggering challenge of a far-flung life faced by an indomitable woman.

Wittenberg taught Russian at the �鶹��Ѱ�� for a decade after earning a master’s in Russian here. She is remembered as a compelling teacher, now immortalized with a scholarship that is named for her and summarizes her life in 54 words. There is more to her story.

Born in Manchuria, China, educated as a dentist, married and later detained for four years in World War II Japan, she moved to post-war America and reared two boys in rural Colorado before coming to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. She could have taught a rigorous curriculum on life. She was content to teach Russian.

At the top of the page: Elizabeth and Maria Shevchenko sail near Yokohama, Japan, in 1937. Above: Elizabeth and Ernst Wittenberg sit near a fireplace in Boulder in the 1980s.

Peter Wittenberg, a retired pathologist in North Carolina and a �鶹��Ѱ��alumnus, recently shared his mother’s story with this publication. David Burrous, her student and friend and a teacher of Russian and Spanish in Jefferson County schools (and a �鶹��Ѱ��alumnus), also shared his recollections. This is their account:

Elizabeth Shevchenko was born in Harbin, China, to a Ukrainian family who built part of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Her sister was born in Ukraine, and the family frequently traveled between Ukraine and Manchuria.

Elizabeth and her sister studied dentistry in Germany and, after earning her credential, Elizabeth moved to Tokyo, where she met Ernst Wittenberg, a young OB-GYN doctor.

He had worked for the Salvation Army Hospital in Berlin and later, with his father’s help, became a ship doctor and traveled the world. He moved to Japan in 1935 and opened a private practice, later becoming a physician for the British and U.S. Embassy delegations.

In Tokyo, they had two children, Peter and Paul. It was still a time of relative peace, though not for long.

Detained and marked for death

In 1941, before it attacked the United States, Japan was widely expected to attack. Fearing for their lives, the Wittenbergs secured a British visa and were scheduled to sail for Britain on the Swedish ship Gripsholm on Dec. 7, 1941.

But that was the “day of infamy” on which Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, propelling the United States into World War II.

Japan refused to let the Wittenbergs leave the country and interned the family. Britain tried to exchange the Wittenbergs for POWs, but Japan refused.

“The Japanese were afraid that my dad knew too much about what was going on in the diplomatic corps, so they put us on house arrest,” Peter Wittenberg says. The Swiss Embassy and Red Cross recruited Ernst Wittenberg to join their medical team. He was in the first group of physicians sent to treat U.S. prisoners of war at the Nagoya prison camp.

“I have his notes, and they were tearjerking. The prisoners were treated inhumanely. Food was scarce, and intimidation was common,” Wittenberg says, noting that Japan also intimidated the Wittenberg family:

“My neighbor was hung in front of our house as a warning.”

Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg near Yokohama, Japan, in 1937.

The entire Wittenberg family was to be executed on Aug. 15, 1945, but the execution order was halted because that was also the day that Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender.

The beginning and end of the war thus bookmarked their forced confinement and their escape from death.

New obstacles, more prejudice

After the war, Ernst Wittenberg became the personal doctor to the wife of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who commanded U.S. forces in the Pacific. Also, the family sailed to Seattle on a troop ship, ostensibly to freedom.

“Dad was a German Jew—mother was Russian Orthodox—and he had some money in the bank. But the (American) bank confiscated it, so we had no money.” The family’s money remained frozen and unavailable to them until the 1960s.

Ernst borrowed money from a sister in New York, so the near-penniless family then moved to Long Beach, New York. Young Peter and Paul went to school there.

“I spoke fluent Japanese, German and a smattering of English,” Wittenberg recalls. “Since we did not have grades in Japan, they put me in third grade, which I flunked.”

Elizabeth had been a dentist in Japan, but she would have had to repeat her training in dentistry to practice here. She declined. To help the family survive, she performed menial labor at a local hospital. She also waited tables.

Ernst faced similar obstacles.

“In those days, they didn’t let foreigners practice medicine in the states,” especially if they were German, Wittenberg notes. Colorado was one of the few states that allowed German-born physicians to take the medical licensing exam.

A few days before Ernst was scheduled to take the test, the state of Colorado forbade him to take the exam.

William L. Knous, who was then Colorado’s governor, intervened on Wittenberg’s behalf. To those who would deny Wittenberg the right to practice medicine here, Knous said, “You can’t do that to the poor guy,” Peter Wittenberg recalls.

After Ernst worked for a time at Penrose Hospital in Colorado Springs, the family settled in the tiny town of La Jara, in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Ernst Wittenberg took over the OB-GYN practice of a Quaker physician and delivered about 100 babies a year.

Initially, the nearby Alamosa Hospital denied Wittenberg privileges but later relented under pressure from other physicians.

In the 1950s, Ernst Wittenberg wanted to leave the San Luis Valley, and the family moved to Boulder, over Elizabeth’s objections. Ernst became a physician at the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Wardenburg Student Health Center.

Elizabeth enrolled in a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder master’s program in Russian and graduated in 1964. Peter earned a degree in biology in 1960 from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, then an MD from CU’s medical school in 1964. Peter’s brother, Paul, now deceased, earned his veterinary degree from Colorado State University in 1964.

“So, we all graduated the same week, which was unusual,” Peter Wittenberg says.

Drinking with George Gamow, speaking in many tongues

In Boulder, Elizabeth and Ernst became friends with George Gamow, the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder physicist who advocated for and developed the Big Bang theory of cosmology and after whom the Gamow Tower on campus is named. Gamow was born in Odessa, which was part of the Soviet Union then but became part of Ukraine after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991.

Gamow was Russian. “George would be at our house frequently,” often drinking cognac, Wittenberg recalls, though Wittenberg switched Gamow’s libation to vodka, because Gamow could drink great volumes of cognac. Vodka was cheaper.

David Burrous remembers many evenings at the Wittenberg home. The Shevchenkos were Ukrainian, but like many Ukrainian families, they spoke Russian and Ukrainian. Elizabeth’s brother was an exception. He refused to speak Russian and spoke only in Ukrainian.

In an undated photograph, the Shevchenko family poses for a portrait. Elizabeth is seated in the front, wearing black.

At dinner parties, the lingua franca could change, Burrous notes. A man who spoke Polish and German could speak in German to Elizabeth and Ernst, who would translate to English. Elizabeth’s sister-in-law visited from South America, and she spoke only Spanish and German. Though she spoke Chinese, Japanese, German, Ukrainian, English and Russian, Elizabeth did not know Spanish.

At the dinner table, then, Elizabeth’s sister-in-law spoke Spanish to Burrous and his wife, Alisa, who translated to English. “Occasionally we would use the wrong language with the wrong person and the table would erupt in laughter,” Burrous says, adding: “Dinner was always a multicultural experience."

The fare, too, was exotic. Before every dinner, Elizabeth would serve an hors d'oeuvre; her favorite was pickled cod.

“I don't know if you've ever had pickled cod, but it's a little bit like bubble gum. I mean, you just chew it and chew it,” Burrous notes. “But she always insisted that the the first part of the hors d'oeuvres was going to be pickled cod. And she wouldn't bring out the next hors d'oeuvre until we all finished the pickled cod. Ernst detested pickled cod, but he knew better than to not partake.”

Teaching with a passion

Elizabeth never complained about not working as a dentist in the United States. “She just saw an opportunity to teach, and she didn’t want to go through dental school again,” Wittenberg says.

Burrous agrees. “Her love was the Russian language and teaching. She was so kind in class, encouraging us to speak Russian. She had a new focus. In fact, I didn’t know she was a doctor of dentistry until several years before she passed away. It just never came up.

"We always spoke Russian together, in and outside of class. Meeting on Saturday mornings for coffee and a chance to speak Russian, my facility to speak Russian much improved.”

Although she was popular with the students and successful in teaching Russian, she did not gain a permanent faculty position at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. The university reminded her that she was married to a physician and said another, male, candidate “needed the job” as a permanent faculty member.

“She was madder than hell,” Wittenberg recalls. “She was so mad when they told her that.”

Elizabeth Shevchenko poses for her graduation portrait, after earning her dentistry credential, in Germany.

Despite the setback, Elizabeth taught for a decade at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and took other opportunities to teach Russian. “She just loved teaching, and she had a good personality,” Wittenberg says.

And a compelling personality, Burrous adds. She was fully multilingual, but she didn’t learn English until she was an adult. For that reason, she sometimes used phrases that would evoke laughter from her friends.

At a gathering whose attendees included �鶹��Ѱ��alumnus John Bartow, Elizabeth said, “I want to sit next to the John.” She did not repeat that mistake.

Elizabeth loved to eat at a restaurant called the Black Angus, Burrous recalled. “But when she would tell us that she and Ernst were going out to dinner that night, she would say they were going to the Black Agnes. We kidded her about that for years.”

“She always took the joke very well. I mean, here was a woman who spoke six different languages, and we’re joking with her because she pronounced something incorrectly.”

Burrous attributes Elizabeth’s facility with language, in part, to the fact that she was extroverted and enjoyed talking with people, and in part to the fact that she needed to learn foreign languages when she was in foreign lands.

“If she went to a grocery store and there was someone speaking Japanese, she would join in the conversation. If there were someone speaking German, she would join in,” Burrous recalls.

She soaked up new languages as she went to the grocers, ferried clothes to the dry cleaners, “all of those things regardless of what country they were in,” Burrous adds.

Elizabeth maintained her Russian Orthodox Christian customs. For instance, when Burrous and his family moved into a new home, she brought them a loaf of bread and flask of salt, a Russian tradition that imparted a “house spirit.”

When those who have a house spirit move to a new home, they take the spirit, along with the bread and salt, with them. “You say, ‘House spirit, come with us. We are going to a new house,’” Burrous notes.

Now in a different home, the Burrous family still has the bread and salt she gave them, sustaining the spirit of the house and the memory of their friend.

Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg received her MA in Slavic Languages from �鶹��Ѱ��in 1964 and taught at �鶹��Ѱ��for 10 years and is the namesake for the Elizabeth Shevchenko Wittenberg Scholarship. She was involved in Russian activities throughout the state, including the High School Olimpiada of Spoken Russian and Jefferson County’s weekend Russian immersion village “Sosnovka.” She died in 1990.

Ernst Wittenberg was inducted into San Luis Valley Health’s Medical Hall of Fame in 2017. He died in 1990.

Photos courtesy of the Wittenberg family.

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‘Classroom in the sky’ inspires generations of researchers, students

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 20:34:46 +0000

‘Classroom in the sky’ inspires generations of researchers, students Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/02/2023 - 14:34

Cay Leytham-Powell

As the Mountain Research Station celebrates turning 100, a look back on its history—and toward its future

The sky was a perfect crystal blue as 50 undergraduate students from the �鶹��Ѱ�� spent their Saturday atop a mountain clustered around grasshoppers.

Plastic cages scarcely taller than the swaying golden grasses lay scattered about—some excluding the insects, others preventing their escape—all to see how the creatures responded to the vegetation within.

Rather than assist with the research, which was being conducted by a postdoctoral student from the University of Oregon, these general biology students hiked up a narrow, rugged path amid dense pine and yellowing aspens to this break in the trees, called Elk Meadow, to learn about research—both its legacy and its future almost 10,000 feet above sea level.

Top of the page: Bill Bowman works with a student up on the tundra. Photo by Patrick Campbell/�鶹��Ѱ��. Above: The Mountain Research Station is run by a dedicated set of staff, students and faculty who maintain equipment, gather data and work on one of the most beautiful parts of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder's campus. (Credit: �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder)

Just north of Nederland, about 26 miles from Boulder, is �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s “classroom in the sky”—the Mountain Research Station. It is the university’s highest research facility and is home to some of the world’s longest-running alpine research, from how trees respond to increasing wildfires, to the charismatic little pikas and chickadees that call these slopes home, to the changing composition of the soil itself.

Graduate students and some undergraduates in the natural sciences find their way here. And yet general biology students have rarely had the opportunity to visit and learn about the facility—until now.

“You usually see graduate students or faculty or staff up there, but undergrads are rarer,” explains Warren Sconiers, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EBIO) at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and the trip’s organizer.

“We (EBIO professors) want them to know what opportunities there are in research, and as soon as they realize it, and as soon as they want to (participate), get them out here as a part of the research at Boulder.”

The Mountain Research Station’s legacy

The Mountain Research Station has long been a pilar of support for alpine research and education. And that legacy is clear in the make-up of the place itself—from classrooms and offices to a dining hall and living spaces to bird-nest boxes used to study hybridization hanging on pine trees.

The Mountain Research Station, originally known as Science Lodge and Science Camp, was built in 1920 on what once was federal land. It is one of the oldest alpine field research facilities in the world, and one of the best, argues Bill Bowman, the station’s former director and a professor emeritus in EBIO. Bowman says that is in large part because of the staff that make this this place run and the expert leadership of John Marr, who became the station’s director in 1950.

Marr founded many of the programs the station is now known for, like the Mountain Climate Program, and provided the scientific groundwork for the current Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and researches how mountain ecosystems are transforming in response to climate change. It is the only LTER spot focusing on alpine environments in North America and is one of the original LTERs, continuously funded since 1980.

Additionally, through the Mountain Climate Program—created to evaluate the relationship between climate and the major ecosystem types of the Front Range—the station is home to the longest continuous record of greenhouse gas measurements in the continental United States, found above timberline at around 11,500 feet, and the second-longest in the world, behind only the station on Mauna Loa in Hawaii.

The long-term data that’s been collected here is really priceless, and I think being at a place that’s contributed so much to our understanding of long-term change in climate and ecosystems is really special.”

“It’s really been one of the main places on the planet where we’ve learned about long-term changes in climate and mountain ecosystems,” says Scott Taylor, the station’s director and an associate professor in EBIO. “The long-term data that’s been collected here is really priceless, and I think being at a place that’s contributed so much to our understanding of long-term change in climate and ecosystems is really special.”

In addition to the LTER program and Mountain Climate Program, the Boulder Creek Critical Zone Program and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) also conduct research near the station.

“We wouldn’t be able to do half of what we’ve done at the Mountain Research Station if it weren’t for (Marr’s) efforts,” Bowman says.

Taylor agrees, adding that the Mountain Research Station is “really unique. . . . Lots of places have research stations, but not a lot have this kind of history.”

That history, though, extends past just data to the people who have found their way here through the decades.

Generations of care

Bowman became involved with the station in the 1970s as an undergraduate in environmental, population and organismic biology (now EBIO and integrative physiology). At the time, Bowman worked with a graduate student in the lab of Professor Emeritus Jeff Mitton, who was studying forest genetics and needed help getting pine needle samples to run genetic analyses on them. Bowman, who loved to hike and snowshoe, volunteered.

Fast-forwarding through multiple graduate degrees, Bowman found himself back in Boulder, but this time as a professor. He was invited to participate in the LTER program, which at that time was more concerned with physical-environment conditions than with biology. Through his participation, Bowman began researching plant ecology and what factors determined which plants occurred where, how communities came together to alter the diversity, and how that influences ecosystem functioning.

It was through Bowman’s lab that Katharine Suding, now the principal investigator for the LTER program and a Distinguished Professor in EBIO, became involved in the program, then as a postdoctoral researcher.

In 1990, a few years after Bowman began his alpine research, he became the station’s director and stayed there for 30 years, until his retirement in 2021.

During his tenure, many repairs were completed on the station, including upgrading infrastructure and building the Moores-Collins Family Lodge and Kiowa classroom, which is across the parking lot from the Marr Lab, where the main offices are housed. He also helped start or expand several large research programs, which provided data for something that Bowman saw firsthand for decades: the effects of climate change on the station.

“I’ve clearly seen climate change come and establish itself as being something that we recognize and we can see symptoms of,” Bowman says. “Climate change is a factor that’s going to become more and more important in how the station operates.”

Additionally, under Bowman’s leadership, the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, funded by the National Science Foundation, was established at the station. For more than 20 years, that program has brought undergraduates, including Sconiers, from across the United States and the globe to Colorado during the summers.

“It’s gratifying for the faculty who set those (REU) programs up to be able to see the investment come to fruition and see it passed on,” Bowman says. “That’s one of the most satisfying things that I’ve gotten while being director of the Mountain Research Station.”

Inspiring those to come

Sconiers was a student at the University of California, Irvine when he learned about the station. At the time, he was interested in research and graduate school but knew he needed to join a lab to do that. He began contacting faculty around campus, and one of them, Suding, then at UC Irvine, said yes—and recommended he pursue an REU.

Scott Taylor's research applies genomics and field experiments to natural hybrid zones and closely related taxa in order to investigate the architecture of reproductive isolation—the hallmark of speciation—and the genetic bases of traits relevant to speciation.

He applied and was accepted by the program at the Mountain Research Station. While there, he helped collect data detailing how the alpine landscape had been altered in response to climate change.

“The REU was critical for my career,” Sconiers says. “It was my first opportunity to devise a project from scratch, so come up with my own ideas and have it fit into a research interest, and then I got to collect all of the data, so I got to carry it through. In class, you’re just learning how this works or doing small versions of things, but this was the first chance I had to do everything.”

After graduating, Sconiers was a lab tech for Suding for a year before going on to graduate school for entomology. He eventually became a professor at the University of the Ozarks in Arkansas and stayed there for a few years.

It was about that time that he ran into Suding, who told him about an opening at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

That brought him back to the university, this time as a teaching professor and a researcher with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research—which runs the Mountain Research Station—where he studies how plant species composition affects insect diversity at high elevations.

By bringing his general biology students to the station, he hopes to introduce the next generation of scholars to its possibilities.

“The idea of the trip was so the students can talk with the faculty who do research there and potentially just be up there for research and other things, so really just to take this resource that’s unique to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and introduce it to students,” Sconiers says. “Let them know that you can have an interest, and that’s enough to get involved.”

Taylor, who hopes to use his tenure as director to make the station more visible and inclusive for everyone, is thrilled.

“There’s the scientific legacy of the station, but then also there’s one of inspiring generations to care about alpine ecosystems and mountain ecosystems,” Taylor says.

“That’s partially why I love field stations. They have such a big impact—a disproportional impact.”

As the Mountain Research Station celebrates turning 100, a look back on its history—and toward its future.

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CU’s symbol is male, but the first version highlighted a female

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 15:52:28 +0000

CU’s symbol is male, but the first version highlighted a female Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/29/2022 - 09:52

Women’s history snapshot: From 1893 to 1908, the University Seal featured an image of a Greek female and the ‘Let Your Light Shine’ motto

Those who know the University of Colorado generally recognize the official University Seal: It adorns diplomas, transcripts and other official documents.

The seal depicts a male Greek classical figure sitting near a pillar, holding a scroll. His scroll points toward laurel branches framing a burning torch. In between are the words “Let Your Light Shine.”

At the top of the page: The current seal of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, adopted in 1908, depicts a male Greek classical figure sitting in front of a pillar and holding a scroll. Next to the figure, laurel branches frame a burning torch. The inscription in Greek reads “Let Your Light Shine.” Above: The central figure on the first university seal was a Greek woman.

This is the university’s second adopted seal. The first also depicted a Greek figure kneeling before a lamp, bearing the same message. A key difference is that central figure on the first university seal was not a man, but a woman.

Introducing the first University Seal in 1893, then President James Baker told that year’s graduates that the emblem bore a Greek motto, “chosen from the volume of Christian teachings, translated to mean ‘Let Your Light Shine.’”

The emblem itself was a reproduction of a medallion created by William Wyon, a British engraver. As Baker told the graduates, the outer rim of the seal was an etching of the mariposa lily, “plucked in the fullness of bloom from the base of our own beautiful foothills—a true Colorado flower.”

Baker concluded, “One who chooses to decipher these emblems may read—Truth, Art, Science.”

Before 1893, the university used a slightly altered version of the official seal of the State of Colorado, but the �鶹��Ѱ��Board of Regents never officially adopted that seal, or—President Baker’s statements notwithstanding—the one featuring the female Greek figure.

As William Davis reports in Glory Colorado, the regents officially chose the current seal in 1908, picking a design by a Henry Read of Denver. Read said he stuck with the classical theme because “the Greek civilization stood as the criterion of culture.”

The central idea of the seal was light. The laurel suggested honor or success, and the scroll signified written language. “The ‘morning’ of life was indicated by the figure of a young man,” Davis writes.

Today, �鶹��Ѱ��uses two versions of the University Seal. The “official seal,” which features the motto in Greek letters, is used on diplomas, official transcripts, and officially certified regent actions. It is also featured on the president’s chain of office, the university mace, commencement programs, regent regalia and print and electronic publications of the Board of Regents.

The “commercial seal” is identical except that the motto is in English. That seal may be used on official �鶹��Ѱ��stationary, envelopes, websites, signs, vehicles or clothing. It can also be used on business cards of �鶹��Ѱ��employees.

Sources: Sources: Glory Colorado, A History of the University of Colorado, 1858-1963; �鶹��Ѱ��system brand and identity guidelines.

Women’s history snapshot: From 1893 to 1908, the University Seal featured an image of a Greek female and the ‘Let Your Light Shine’ motto.

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First woman elected a �鶹��Ѱ��regent was a prohibitionist

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 22:34:17 +0000

First woman elected a �鶹��Ѱ��regent was a prohibitionist Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/21/2022 - 16:34

Women’s history snapshot: Anna Louise Wolcott Vaile argued that social ills harming women could only be rectified with political power, which relied on women’s suffrage

Colorado recognized women’s right to vote in 1893, but state voters did not elect a woman to the University of Colorado’s governing board until 1910. That pioneer was Anna Louise Wolcott Vaile.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island, she was one of 11 children and earned her education in Wellesley College, a private women's liberal art college in Massachusetts.

Vaile dedicated much of her life to education. She was principal of Wolfe Hall, a women’s seminary school, in Denver from 1892 to 1898. She was also founder and principal of the Wolcott School for Girls, where she served from 1898 to 1913.

At the top of the page: The American Issue, a newspaper owned by the National Anti-Saloon League, reporting that the 18th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution had been ratified, making the manufacture, sale and transportation of intoxicating liquor illegal. Above: Anna Louise Wolcott Vaile became the first female regent for the University of Colorado.

Vaile campaigned for women’s suffrage and remained politically active after suffrage was achieved. Like many crusaders for suffrage, she favored prohibition. The motivation was clear. Alcoholism was rampant through the 19th and early 20th centuries. At its zenith, in 1830, American consumption was the equivalent of 90 bottles of vodka a year, National Geographic reports.

Women suffered as a result, historians note. Men routinely spent money on alcohol rather than food for their families, and rates of domestic violence soared.

Women knew they needed food for their families and safety in their homes, but they could accomplish only so much social change as long as they were barred from voting; Vaile and others made this point explicitly. But even after women gained the vote, Colorado would not ban the sale of alcohol until 1916, four years before the United States followed suit.

Prohibition begat unintended consequences. A vibrant black market run by criminal syndicates sprang up, increasing violence and tax evasion. Prohibition also led to an unanticipated new development: women choosing to become bootleggers and then getting prosecuted for the crime.

As historians have observed, saloons in the pre-Prohibition era were closed to women, unless those women were entertainers and prostitutes. But once producing and selling alcohol became a crime, there was no social convention to keep women from seizing a new way to earn a living. Bootlegging was not only a criminal enterprise but an equal-opportunity one.

As the Longmont Ledger, a then-newspaper, reported in 1923, Vaile remained committed to using political power to vanquish alcohol abuse.

“Needless to say, one of the matters closest to my heart is the prohibition question,” the newspaper recorded Vaile as saying. “Although it is my earnest belief that the solution to this problem lies in the home, it is an undisputed fact that the only effective method in which the drink evil can be ended is by having a living, powerful, active organization to combat it.”

“No matter how high the ideals of the American woman, she is powerless to act effectively without the cooperation of a political organization able to foster the legislation she favors. It is my belief that the women of the state can best bring about the complete end of the drink evil by working through the Republican Party, which first put Colorado in the prohibition problem.”

“It is my hope that Republican women of the state will be ready to present their views, of this and other questions, through me to the national committee, and I am already receiving suggestions which I hope to present at the next meeting of the national body.”

It was another decade before the nation adopted the 21st Amendment, in 1933, repealing Prohibition.

Vaile did not live to see Prohibition repealed. She died in 1928 and is buried in the Fairmont Cemetery in Denver.

Sources: Glory Colorado, A History of the University of Colorado, 1858-1963; National Geographic; Colorado Encyclopedia; History of Colorado, edited by Wilbur Fisk Stone.

Women’s history snapshot: Anna Louise Wolcott Vaile argued that social ills harming women could only be rectified with political power, which relied on women’s suffrage.

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After 100 years, university recognized a pioneer

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Mar 2022 21:44:03 +0000

After 100 years, university recognized a pioneer Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/08/2022 - 14:44

Clint Talbott

Women’s history snapshot: Lucile Berkeley Buchanan graduated in 1918 but wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with other graduates because she was Black

History overlooked Lucile Berkeley Buchanan, the first African American woman to graduate from the University of Colorado. A dogged �鶹��Ѱ��journalist brought her back to the fore.

Tipped off by a newspaper story, Polly McLean, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder associate professor of media studies, spent years exhuming Buchanan’s story and, finally, correcting history. For decades, the university’s official history erroneously stated that the first Black woman to graduate from �鶹��Ѱ��earned her degree in 1924.

In fact, the first Black woman to graduate from �鶹��Ѱ��did so in 1918.

In 2018, a century after Buchanan’s alma mater barred her from walking across the Macky Auditorium stage to accept her degree, Buchanan was more fully recognized. During the May 2018 commencement, Philip P. DiStefano, the campus chancellor, recognized Buchanan. McLean symbolically accepted Buchanan’s degree. Onstage.

At the top of the page: Lucile Berkeley Buchanan, photographed at the time of her high school graduation, was the first African American woman to graduate from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. Above: In this 2007 photo, Polly McLean, associate professor of media studies at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, is seen in front of the childhood home of Lucile Berkeley Buchanan while holding a portrait of Buchanan that was probably taken at the time of her graduation (Photo by Glenn Asakawa, the Denver Post/Getty Images).

Thus it was that the first African American woman to graduate was honored because of the efforts of McLean, the first Black woman to earn tenure at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and the first Black woman to head an academic unit.

McLean preserved a record of Buchanan’s trailblazing life in a book, Remembering Lucile: A Virginia Family's Rise from Slavery and a Legacy Forged a Mile High.

The daughter of emancipated slaves, Buchanan was born in 1884 in Denver. Her family lived on land purchased from P.T. Barnum, the noted circus mogul and cynic.

She became the first in her family to graduate from not one but two of the state’s top institutions of higher education: In 1905, she was the first African American to graduate with a two-year degree from what is now the University of Northern Colorado. In 1918, she was the first Black woman to graduate from CU, earning a degree in German.

After a long career as a school teacher, she lived in Denver until her death in 1989, at the age of 105.

McLean found the story by chance: In 2001, she was doing background research for an assignment she’d given her women’s studies class.

During a visit to the �鶹��Ѱ��Heritage Center in Old Main, McLean was handed a copy of a newspaper article from eight years prior. The story, in the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News, bore this headline: “She was CU’s first Black female grad: A pioneer buried without a headstone.”

The News quoted Doris and Larry Harris, who had purchased Buchanan’s Denver home after the state of Colorado had forced her into a nursing home. The Harrises noted that they’d bought the home for $70,000 and wondered why her estate didn’t yield enough money for a headstone.

The News also quoted a �鶹��Ѱ��spokeswoman as saying that the university would correct the incorrect record “wherever it appears.” Eight years later, the official record was still wrong.

As McLean writes: “A desire to understand the university’s reasoning for dismissing her achievement motivated me to dig deeper, and thus began my search for Lucile.”

The search spanned 10 states and more than 10 years.

By the time McLean was on the story, Doris and Larry Harris had divorced and moved, taking Buchanan’s memorabilia with them. With tenacity and cajolery, McLean unearthed a portrait of the pioneer.

Buchanan applied for her first teaching job in 1905 in a company coal town in Huerfano County, Colorado. She didn’t get the job, but her cause was taken up by a newspaper editor who condemned the racial discrimination that thwarted her hiring.

Buchanan left Colorado and taught in Little Rock and Hot Springs, Ark., then in 1915 enrolled in the University of Chicago, where she studied German, Greek and the British poets Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson.

At CU, she continued her study of German, and McLean underscores a reason: “The Black intelligentsia at the end of the 19th and into the early decades of the 20th century viewed Germany as a ‘spiritual fatherland,’” McLean writes.

Additionally, Buchanan had studied the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, the sociologist, historian and activist who studied in Berlin.

At �鶹��Ѱ��in 1918, Buchanan’s mother, two sisters and a niece came to campus to watch commencement, which was supposed to be a happy occasion. After being barred from the stage, Buchanan left �鶹��Ѱ��and vowed never to return. “She kept her promise,” McLean writes.

We remember Lucile Berkeley Buchanan not only to honor her life, but also to reflect on what we once did and what we could now learn.”

Buchanan went back to school in 1937, enrolling in graduate studies in English literature at the University of Chicago. She was 53. And in 1949, she retired from teaching and returned to Denver to live in the home that her father, the former slave who became a teamster and street commissioner, had built.

There she lived until she was 103, when Colorado Adult Protective Services deemed her a danger to herself, physically restraining her and placing her in a Denver nursing home. The agency asked a court to appoint a conservator to sell Buchanan’s home and pay her bills.

Buchanan was blind and had no family willing or able to help.

Even in old age and confined to a nursing home, Buchanan remained a faithful voter. The News interviewed her and other centenarian voters in 1988, when she was 104 and voting, with assistance, from the nursing home.

Noting that Buchanan did not live to see the university admit its error, James W.C. White, acting dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, observed:

“These gestures are symbolic, but symbols matter. However meager and tardy, the university’s recognition is a kind of reparation. We remember Lucile Berkeley Buchanan not only to honor her life, but also to reflect on what we once did and what we could now learn.”

Women’s history snapshot: Lucile Berkeley Buchanan graduated in 1918 but wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage with other graduates because she was Black.

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Alumnae skirt convention

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Mar 2022 23:46:56 +0000

Alumnae skirt convention Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/07/2022 - 16:46

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Two graduates recall when they were the only female math undergrads at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder

For Ann Lowdermilk and Marlene Pratto, talent in mathematics always felt like the most normal thing in the world. But many of their male classmates and math professors at the �鶹��Ѱ�� in the late 1950s and early ‘60s weren’t quite sure what to make of the aliens in their midst.

“Marlene and I were the only two ‘skirts’ in Hellems Hall,” recalls Lowdermilk (Math’60), of Denver. “We usually sat together, and they didn’t know what to do with two women; they didn’t even know what to do with one woman!”

But there were professors who not only welcomed the two young women, but encouraged them, including the late Arne Magnus, who created an independent study program for them, and Robert McKelvey. Magness eventually became chair of mathematics at Colorado State University and McKelvey finished his career at the University of Montana.

“We had all men in our classes,” says Pratto (Math’60), who has lived in Greensboro, North Carolina since 1969. “A lot of them were older than we were, returning veterans. I think they mostly ignored us. We didn’t study with them.”

At the top of the page: Hellems Hall was home to the Department of Mathematics in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Above: Marlene Pratto (left) was one of only two female math undergrads at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder during her time as a student.

Lowdermilk does recall at least one time when she stirred the attention of a male classmate: when she returned for her senior year wearing an engagement ring.

“The young man sitting behind me said something and I said, ‘Yes, I’m engaged,’” she recalls. After a brief pause, he sighed and said, ‘To think I had just about screwed up enough courage to ask you to coffee…’”

But both Pratto and Lowdermilk were used to being fish out of water at a time when far fewer women went to college and those who did typically went into nursing, education or home economics.

Even in high school, they were the odd women out. But if anything, being in the minority gave them more, not less, confidence.

Attending Smiley Junior High School and Denver East High School, Lowdermilk was smart enough to earn full-ride scholarships to both Colorado College (CC) and �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder. The CC offer came in first, and she accepted. But she believed �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Department of Math was better, and she was never in doubt when its offer came in.

“I ditched the CC scholarship and took the one at CU. My advisor said I should not do that, and I said, ‘Just watch me,’” she says. “When you were a woman in an all-male area, you had to learn to simply stand up for yourself. You couldn’t just fade back in the corner.”

Pratto credits a seventh-grade teacher in Pueblo, Miss Seacat, for sparking her interest in math and science.

“She was a little person, but she made science so dynamic and so interesting. I just loved it,” she says.

She was soon besting the boys in math competitions. She was thrilled when her high-school math teacher John Armstrong (a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus) convinced the powers that be to provide “math analysis”—analogous to calculus—in time for her to take the course her senior year.

When the time came to go to college, she had no option to go out of state or attend a private school, so she faced a choice between �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, Colorado State University and the Colorado School of Mines.

“When (a Mines representative) came to Pueblo Central (High School), he said you’ll double our enrollment of women if you come. That didn’t sound too good,” Pratto recalls. “I’d been to �鶹��Ѱ��for Engineering Days and as part of the all-state orchestra, and I liked it.”

Like Lowdermilk, she received a scholarship to attend �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder in mathematics.

The two women met the summer before their freshman year while taking placement exams and remained friends throughout their �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder careers and beyond.

Lowdermilk worked full adult shifts in payload control during the summer for United Airlines, where her father worked. After graduating from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, she went to work in the operations department of Martin Marietta in Denver.

“My last day was May 6, 1961, the day Alan Shepard went up into space and came down 15 minutes later,” she says. “I would have stayed longer, but as women did at that time, I married and followed my husband, who was a highway contractor. If my husband had not traveled all over the western states, I would have gone on to get advanced degrees.”

After that, she moved to Colorado’s Western Slope, and later rural Utah, to raise a family while her husband helped build I-70.

Math is one of the best degrees you can get. It sets you up to do a whole bunch of things. You learn to think at least somewhat logically and can solve problems.”

“I was a real city girl living with a two-year-old and a baby in a town with 300 registered Mormon souls in Emory, Utah, and the surrounding area,” she says. “I learned how to can, bake bread, quilt, all things I’d never have any association with before. But that’s what women did down there.”

Pratto worked as a summer trainee in mathematics at the National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute for Science and Technology) from her sophomore year on and accepted a full-time position upon graduation. As in school and college, she had few women colleagues.

“One day I was handed a book and told, ‘Tomorrow we’ll program the computer.’ I said, ‘What’s a computer? What’s a program?’” she says. “The next day I sat down with the guy I was working with and wrote a program, and that’s how we learned.”

In 1969, her husband took a faculty position at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and she decided to retire from programming.

“That lasted until about December, when I thought, ‘This is Dullsville, U.S.A.’ … I called the local technical college”—and historically Black university—“North Carolina A&T, which had the largest Black engineering school in the country.”

Asked if she could teach Fortran to engineering faculty, she said yes and began teaching part-time. Eventually, the mother of young children began working from home on programming projects from her dining room table, creating the school’s computer registration system, among other things.

Both long retired, the two friends remain bullish on women and girls studying and entering STEM fields.

“Math is one of the best degrees you can get. It sets you up to do a whole bunch of things. You learn to think at least somewhat logically and can solve problems,” Pratto says. “I can’t think of a better major, then or now.”

Two graduates recall when they were the only female math undergrads at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

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