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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 С�� Boulder 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 Boulder with several roommates who attended the University of Colorado Boulder.

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 Boulder 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, she 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. “That gave us the opportunity to build a really strong friend foundation. There were times over there where things sucked, and I had him to talk to.”

When she returned from deployment and 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,” she remembers him offering.

Without MacKenzie knowing it, he’d spent months finishing his mother’s Boulder basement. She could live with him there and study astrophysics at С�� Boulder, 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 С�� Boulder astrophysics alumna MacKenzie Zurfluh, the famed dome isn’t just where she works, but where she found love.

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Young voices must rise in the climate conversation

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:27:51 +0000

Young voices must rise in the climate conversation Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/12/2026 - 14:27

Cody DeBos

С�� Boulder geography PhD student Ethan Carr joins colleagues worldwide to confront climate change across continents

Ethan Carr has always been drawn to cold places. Growing up, he spent summers exploring national parks and winters immersed in the stark beauty of Alaska.

Now, as a PhD student in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Geography, he spends his days researching the world’s melting ice and participating in an innovative youth leadership forum alongside fellow climate activists from around the world.

They are part of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) - Arctic Youth Leadership Forum, an ambitious new initiative connecting young people from mountain and polar regions to amplify voices in the climate fight and search for new solutions.

“Not everybody needs to be a scientist or a strict climate activist to have an impact. Really, all you need is to have a voice and a passion for it," says Ethan Carr, a С�� Boulder PhD student in geography. (Photo: Ethan Carr)

From soldier to scientist

“It’s been a long, kind of windy road to get to where I’m at today,” Carr says.

That road, it turns out, began at West Point.

Carr didn’t originally set out to become a climate researcher when he enrolled at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. But a mandatory earth-science course nicknamed “DIRT” sparked an interest he didn’t know he had.

“That was kind of the first time I realized that you can make a career out of studying and being in really cool environments while you do it,” he says.

After graduating in 2020 and serving as an infantry officer, Carr’s career was redirected by an injury, forcing him to reassess his path forward. Business school wasn’t appealing, but geography still was.

“I took a couple of pre-MBA courses and couldn’t have been more bored in those,” he recalls. “So I said, ‘I have this geography degree, I might as well try to make a career out of it.’”

That decision led him to С�� Boulder, one of the country’s top hubs for cryosphere research. He moved to the area before even getting into grad school, taking a chance on himself that would soon pay dividends.

First came a master’s degree. Then he turned his attention to pursuing a PhD in geography with support from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Climate leadership across continents

Carr was recently named part of the inaugural class of youth champions in the HKH - Arctic Youth Leadership Forum, a yearlong fellowship launched by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Nepal. The forum brings together 12 young leaders from some of the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions.

Carr first saw the application on LinkedIn and was intrigued not just by the opportunity, but by the forum’s emphasis on public education and policy.

“One thing I’ve realized in my scientific journey so far is you have a lot of scientists who are obviously very intelligent, but not everyone wants to engage in public education, especially on the policy side,” Carr says.

Coming from a military background, he was already used to thinking geopolitically, so he saw the forum as a way to merge science with diplomacy while making a real impact.

“Within our cohort, we represent nations that are some of the largest emitters, being the U.S., China, and India,” Carr explains. “But we also have representatives from some of the countries that are experiencing the effects of climate change firsthand.”

While studying at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Ethan Carr took a mandatory earth-science course nicknamed “DIRT” that sparked an interest he didn’t know he had. (Photo: Ethan Carr)

In the Arctic, Carr points to the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, a reality threatening both biodiversity in the region and Indigenous fishing economies. Meanwhile, countries like Pakistan, Nepal, and India, home to thousands of Himalayan glaciers, are confronting retreating ice sheets that underpin their water security.

“We see a lot of similarities in how things are changing, but this collaboration shows the kind of differences in who’s being affected and the populations being affected more so,” he says.

Data meet lived experience

As part of his doctoral work, Carr studies glacial lake outburst floods in Greenland—events in which meltwater lakes suddenly burst through glaciers, often with destructive force. He relies on satellite data to track water levels, but he’s also learned to listen to what local people are witnessing on the ground.

“Local fishermen have been noticing trends where, after these drainage events, they see an increase in primary productivity in local fjords. That has a significant impact on fishing for the year,” he says.

“That’s not something I would have expected as a scientist just looking at satellite imagery.”

This experience is one among many that has shaped Carr’s belief in combining scientific knowledge and the lived experiences of those native to the regions being studied. It also helped reinforce his understanding of the importance of bringing more voices to the table.

“Our generation and the generation after us are going to be the ones that are inheriting the climate mess we’ve been given by former generations, so those voices need to be heard,” he says.

Speaking of his fellow members on the leadership forum, Carr adds, “These are people that are passionate and empowered youth that have good ideas.”

A global generation

Carr sees connection as a unique advantage in his generation’s ability to catalyze change in the climate arena.

“We’re the most globalized generation there has ever been. My parents couldn’t pick up the phone and directly communicate with someone living in Bangladesh or Bhutan. But we can do that and form genuine working relationships with somebody 12 hours across the globe and work on projects that connect our regions,” he says.

He says the ability to collaborate across borders and cultures is a crucial advantage in the fight against climate change.

But so is perspective.

In his conversations with peers in South Asia, Carr has come to appreciate just how immediate the crisis is elsewhere and why people closer to home might not be able to recognize the urgency.

“In the U.S., I think sometimes we can be kind of separate from understanding what’s really happening in the world. Obviously, we’ve had massive disasters, but we’re not going to be seeing the 10-, 15-million people being displaced in Southeast Asia if sea level rises a few centimeters,” he says.

Ethan Carr (bottom row, left) and his colleagues in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) - Arctic Youth Leadership Forum. (Photo: Ethan Carr)

“These are real impacts happening on that side of the world that we can be pretty ignorant to in the U.S., and it’s something I’ve become way more aware about after talking with folks from over there. They have a lot more urgency in their fight for climate solutions because they can’t afford to wait as long as other parts of the world can,” he adds.

A message for future climate leaders

When asked what he would say to those who feel overwhelmed by the negativity surrounding climate change, Carr doesn’t hesitate. He knows the scale of the crisis can feel suffocating, but he’s also quick to challenge the idea that only scientists belong in the fight.

“Not everybody needs to be a scientist or a strict climate activist to have an impact. Really, all you need is to have a voice and a passion for it,” he says.

Carr believes that the most effective climate solutions will come not just from labs or policy think tanks, but from every corner of society. In fact, he sees this diversity of thought as essential.

“We need climate-minded people in all professions, from business to economics, engineering, and especially journalism. The more we talk about it, the more awareness we can bring to the issue,” he says.

He also sees a need to reframe how climate change is discussed.

“The same rhetoric that’s been used the last few decades of, ‘This is bad because our planet is warming up, and we aren’t going to be able to live,’ hasn’t delivered. Changing how we discuss it to focus on what climate change will do in certain regions and how it will affect local people and economies, I think, is a better way to look at it,” Carr says.

More than anything, Carr encourages young people to speak up and get involved—even if they don’t have a degree or defined role yet.

“The world needs the youth to step up in these spaces. Don’t wait to be asked. Make a space for yourself and move into it. Use your voice to make good things happen in the world.”

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С�� Boulder geography PhD student Ethan Carr joins colleagues worldwide to confront climate change across continents.

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Top image: Ethan Carr (third from left) and fellow member of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) - Arctic Youth Leadership Forum (Photo: Ethan Carr)

One photo, many whales: scholar captures research above the Arctic Circle

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 21:31:55 +0000

One photo, many whales: scholar captures research above the Arctic Circle Rachel Sauer Mon, 02/02/2026 - 14:31

Cody DeBos

For С�� Boulder ecology and evolutionary biology alumna Emma Vogel, an award-winning photo captured a vital moment of research and science

Soft light slanted across the gray Norwegian sky, bouncing off the frigid water where Emma Vogel sat in a research boat. She had just helped her team tag a whale and was scanning the waves for the next group. It was a rare reprieve in what otherwise tends to be a chaotic venture.

She lifted her camera, but not for data collection this time. The scene was simply too vivid not to capture.

“I was super surprised about catching the little whale in the background of it, framed in the platform,” Vogel recalls. “That was a very, very nice surprise. I’m not often using my camera to take pictures of people, but the lighting was so atmospheric, I thought it would be a good shot.”

Emma Vogel, a 2016 С�� Boulder graduate in ecology and evolutionary biology, is a postdoctoral researcher at The Arctic University of Norway.

The photo, showing a researcher poised to launch a tracking tag set against a backdrop of swarming seabirds, went on to win Nature’s 2025 Scientist at Work photo competition.

For Vogel, a 2016 University of Colorado Boulder graduate, the image is more than an award-winner. It’s a snapshot of her life spent tracking giants of the ocean through the shifting currents of science and sustainability.

A path north

Vogel’s journey to the coast of Northern Norway, firmly situated in the Arctic Circle, began in Washington, D.C., but when it was time to go to college, the mountains of Colorado called.

“I thought Colorado looked beautiful. And I kind of always knew I wanted to do science or ecology, so it seemed like a perfect place for that,” she says.

During her time at С�� Boulder, Vogel studied ecology and evolutionary biology, exploring the impact of forest fires and regrowth. A semester abroad in Sweden opened her eyes to marine science.

“I got to take some more aquatic and ocean marine-based courses and I fell in love with the field.”

After graduation, Vogel spent two years working in animal welfare policy with the Humane Society of the United States. However, she felt drawn to do hands-on research.

That led her to Tromsø, Norway, where she earned her master’s and PhD and now works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Arctic University of Norway’s Arctic Sustainability Lab.

Fieldwork at the edge of the world

As one might imagine, life and research in the Arctic come with their own rhythms.

“Some of the unique, really wonderful things that maybe people wouldn't expect, is that it's such a diverse place, both the people and the ecosystems, the organisms that live here,” Vogel says. “We have a beautiful combination of mountains and ocean right in the same space.”

Fieldwork in this environment is both harsh and intimate. Vogel and her team spend weeks tracking and tagging humpback and killer whales in the fjords during the winter herring season. She says the process can be logistically easier than in other places because the whales stay close to the coast.

But the conditions are punishing.

“In the morning, we often need to shovel snow out of our boats before we can get started, and it’s cold enough where the seawater is freezing onto the boat. Temperatures are often well below zero while we’re out doing research.”

Luckily, Vogel has discovered something of a superpower.

“The thing that changed it for me was when I discovered battery-powered socks that you can put on a little cycle to heat up every 30 minutes,” she says with a grin. “They really make all the difference.”

Those socks come in handy during long days on the water when Vogel and her team are using air-powered tracking equipment to attach satellite transmitters to whales. The tags allow researchers to track their movements long after they disappear from the coast.

“Normally, once the whales get enough of the herring, we don’t know where they go. With the tags, we can see their movement patterns for a month to six months, depending on the species and tag,” she says.

From there, Vogel and her team can interpret the data to paint a clearer picture of what these oceanic giants do when they slip below the waves.

“We can figure out their behavior based on the data. If they’re slowing down and turning a lot in one area, we can say they’re possibly looking for food and foraging. If they’re traveling in a straight line really fast, then it’s kind of transiting behavior. For humpbacks, we’ve tracked them through a full migration. So, going down to the Caribbean and then back up to Norway and even up into the Barents Sea.

“These tags let us track them through the entire ocean and see things we otherwise wouldn’t be able to, which is, I think, really exciting.”

Emma Vogel's award-winning photo shows biologist Audun Rikardsen, her PhD advisor at The Arctic University of Norway, battling waves in a northern Norwegian fjord, aided by the glow from a nearby fishing trawler.

Data-informed decisions

Part of Vogel’s work in the Arctic Sustainability Lab involves turning movement data into better marine policy.

“We are working to create ways to use tracking data to help spatial planners consider these migratory animals when designing local marine protected areas,” she says.

It’s a tricky challenge. Protected zones often prioritize stationary habitats for sea grasses and corals (and the animals that rely on them), not animals that travel hundreds or thousands of miles every year. Vogel and her team hope to change that by giving planners reliable data to inform their policy decisions.

But her work isn’t solely focused on marine life. She’s also part of a project called the Coastal Barometer, which helps quantify the health and sustainability of Northern Norway’s seaside communities.

“We developed a website called the Coastal Barometer to offer different ways of looking at and considering sustainability. It lets people from different municipalities click on where they’re from and see where they’re performing well and where there needs to be improvement,” Vogel says.

The project includes metrics for biodiversity, water quality, carbon storage, tourism, economic resilience and even a unique measure called “sense of place” that considers how much people value their connection to the local land and sea.

The latter is more urgent than ever. While Vogel doesn’t want to attribute all changes in her community to climate change, she’s already seen worrying signs.

“This last summer and the summer before we had about a month of days that you were able to go hiking in shorts in the Arctic. That’s been rare since I came here in 2018. For now, they’re nice, but you don’t want it much warmer.”

Those summer days may be rare enough to feel like a novelty today. But for researchers like Vogel, they are a quiet warning that even in the planet’s most rugged corners, change is underway. Thanks to valuable data collected by humans who care, communities and conservationists can be equipped with tools to adapt to those changes.

Boulder foundation, global reach

Despite her current home being thousands of miles away, Vogel still sees her time at С�� Boulder as a defining chapter.

“It really set me up so well, I think, to be an interdisciplinary researcher. Not only taking science courses, but also exploring literature, communication, human geography. I even took a course about Vikings, which was quite fun,” she recalls.

That foundation has served her well in a career that now sprawls across ecology, community engagement and policy innovation. For students hoping to follow in her footsteps, Vogel has one piece of advice: “Genuine curiosity.”

“You need to really want to understand and be inquisitive,” she says. “To understand for the sake of understanding—not just taking your courses. Asking questions and not taking things at surface value, just always wondering, ‘Why? Why? Why?’ can really get you far.”

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For С�� Boulder ecology and evolutionary biology alumna Emma Vogel, an award-winning photo captured a vital moment of research and science.

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С�� Boulder philosopher building a bridge to Africa

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 22:11:46 +0000

С�� Boulder philosopher building a bridge to Africa Rachel Sauer Tue, 12/09/2025 - 15:11

Cody DeBos

Associate Professor Ajume Wingo was recently appointed as a research associate at the Center for Philosophy in Africa at Nelson Mandela University, a recognition of his decades of scholarship

For a young Ajume Wingo growing up in Nso, a northwestern region of Cameroon, philosophy wasn’t a topic relegated to ancient Stoics or the halls of academia.

“Philosophy was not an abstract pursuit. It was a living practice woven in everyday life,” says Wingo, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder. “As a child I was surrounded by elders who transmitted their wisdom to me through storytelling, through rituals, through symbols, through ceremonies. That had deep philosophic meaning.”

That early foundation shaped not just how Wingo views philosophy today, but also how he practices it. He values using lived experience as a starting point and working toward the abstract, rather than the other way around.

Ajume Wingo, a С�� Boulder associate professor of philosophy, was recently appointed as a research associate at the Center for Philosophy in Africa at Nelson Mandela University.

“I start from life, and then I go up. That’s the way I think about philosophy as a living practice. As life,” he explains.

Looking beyond our circles

Recently, Wingo’s philosophical journey has taken a major step forward.

In October, he was appointed as a research associate at the Center for Philosophy in Africa at Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. The role recognizes his decades of scholarship and offers a new platform for expanding international research collaborations between African and Western thinkers.

“At a personal level, it’s a recognition many years in the making. It gives me the opportunity to work collaboratively at the international level, to act like a bridge between Western philosophy and African philosophy,” Wingo says.

His appointment is the result of a personal connection with Nelson Mandela University that has grown over many years. Wingo had previously delivered lectures across South Africa, but his keynote speech in April 2024 at Nelson Mandela University titled “In the Shade of Power” sparked something more.

“Many of the students from the university came up to me after. They wanted to exchange numbers and work with me and all that,” Wingo recalls.

During that same visit, he also participated in many broader conversations around ethics and justice in business alongside thinkers and industry leaders from across Africa.

Wingo’s research draws on both his formal training and his cultural roots in Cameroon. That dual grounding allows him to explore concepts through multiple lenses, he says, from Western theories of justice to African communal models of governance.

“Philosophy reflects the lived experience of the people that philosophers are dealing with,” he says. “And that already gives us some kind of differentiation.”

For Wingo and the kind of political philosophy he practices, Nelson Mandela University is a natural home.

“The Nelson Mandela University is named after Nelson Mandela, who was a victim of apartheid and who came out with a lot of compassion and reconciliation,” he says.

Take the concept of freedom.

In Western political philosophy, Wingo says, freedom is often defined as the absence of interference or constraint. But he says that idea doesn’t translate well into many African contexts.

“The African perspective on freedom is the presence of the right kind of associations. The presence of the community, of belonging. The more you belong, the more you are associated with people, the more freedom you have,” Wingo explains.

He says this contrast extends to views on politics, citizenship and even the role of blood and kinship in shaping identity. Where Western models may emphasize choice, contract and individual rights, African perspectives tend to view community as organic and identity as inherited.

“Politics from the African perspective has always been about … these bounded people in this place with a story, real or imagined, deciding for themselves how they should live,” Wingo says.

By bringing these frameworks into the conversation, he hopes to “humanize” politics and offer new ways of asking questions that might help us understand global and regional challenges. However, he warns that conversation can only happen when philosophers are willing to look outward.

“Philosophy itself is a kind of death when it is inward looking,” Wingo says. “Some of the time I worry that philosophy is becoming like a ghetto … a bunch of people sitting around talking among themselves about themselves.”

“You miss a lot when you’re inward looking, when you keep asking the same thing over and over again. And you gain a lot when you open up to the rest of the world.”

He believes true philosophical vitality comes when thinkers “communicate across the mighty mountains and across the vast oceans,” adding, “That’s philosophy at its best.”

Becoming a bridge

For now, Wingo hopes his appointment at Nelson Mandela University can serve as a bridge, both for his own work and for the С�� Boulder community. He’s already planning faculty and student exchanges between the two institutions as well as an international symposium and conferences in both Colorado and South Africa.

“Even just the idea of me being there is exciting. Many people will learn about С�� Boulder because of me and will get to hear a new perspective on philosophy,” he says.

That kind of cross-cultural exchange is good for the discipline, helping to shape the ideas born of those who practice it.

“To learn about your culture, you should make it foreign to you by learning about the cultures of other people,” Wingo says, paraphrasing Aristotle. “And in that way, you learn about your culture, not just the cultures of other people.”

In a world facing increasingly global challenges, Wingo believes that philosophers must rise to the moment. He says asking bold questions, ones that defy norms and societal comforts, is the only way we can overcome today’s biggest obstacles.

“You miss a lot when you’re inward looking, when you keep asking the same thing over and over again,” he says, “And you gain a lot when you open up to the rest of the world.”

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Associate Professor Ajume Wingo was recently appointed as a research associate at the Center for Philosophy in Africa at Nelson Mandela University, a recognition of his decades of scholarship.

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Top photo: Hu Chen/Unsplash

Photojournalist turning aerial art into climate archive

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Photojournalist turning aerial art into climate archive Rachel Sauer Thu, 12/04/2025 - 07:30

Cody DeBos

С�� Boulder geography alumnus Katie Writer shares Alaska’s changing landscape from the skies

On a clear day high above south-central Alaska, you can find Katie Writer pulling open the window of her Super Cub airplane and leaning her camera out into the rushing wind. Below, the landscape doesn’t look like the same one she once hiked and skied. That’s exactly why she’s flying.

For Writer (Geog’91), flying offers a unique vantage point from which to witness the planet changing in real time.

“Climate change is something I saw coming all the way back in my С�� days studying geography, and I knew it would be a big part of my life’s calling. I have a sense of duty as a photojournalist pilot and an advocate for the environment. Whenever there’s a chance for me to tell the story of the landscape or point emphasis to an area that needs some protection, I jump on it,” she says.

Geography alumnus Katie Writer has built a career at the intersection of science, storytelling and adventure. (Photo: Katie Writer)

From documenting glacier retreat to photographing generations of spruce trees withered by beetle kill, she’s built a career at the intersection of science, storytelling and adventure.

Skiing onto the page

Writer’s journey to the cockpit wasn’t traditional. At С�� Boulder, she majored in geography and raced on the ski team, balancing course loads with weekend races. After graduating, she worked as an interpreter for the United States Olympic Committee at the 1992 Winter Olympics in France, and that lit a fire in her for world-class racing.

“I quickly moved up the ranks and placed 17th at the U.S. National Championships in 1994,” Writer recalls.

But when an injury derailed her career, she pivoted her skiing passion from racing to the page, becoming an aptly named writer of outdoor adventure articles for the likes of Couloir and Powder magazines. One story led her to Denali National Park.

“On that trip, I was inspired to become a pilot,” she says. “I’d also been on another ski trip where a Cessna 185 flew us into the wilderness in a ski plane, and it made me realize that these little planes give you some great access to the wilderness.”

After earning her pilot’s license with support from aviation scholarships, Writer settled in Alaska, where she has since filled her appetite for adventure and storytelling through the lens of her camera. She didn't give up competitive skiing entirely, though, and races in three World Extreme Skiing competitions in Alaska

“Others were noticing my photography and really appreciating the bird’s eye view I was getting as an aerial photographer/pilot. It helped me realize that capturing these images was something I was really passionate about,” she says.

Seeing the story from above

When Writer takes her camera into the sky, the viewpoint of Alaska’s stunning landscapes brings awe, but also a sense of urgency. From her Super Cub, she observes patterns of change. Hillsides of dying spruce. Once thriving glaciers shrinking every year. Riverbanks collapsing after torrential storms. She has returned often to the same places, documenting changes that most people never get to see.

“There’s no doubt when you live in Alaska, you see the effects of the beetle kill. I realized this was an excellent way to present climate change with the visuals from an aerial perspective,” Writer says.

Warmer winters have allowed spruce beetles to survive year-round, leaving entire forests stained with rust-colored decay. Glaciers tell a parallel story of loss.

Aerial views of the changing Alaska landscape captured by Katie Writer from the open window of her Super Cub airplane. (Photos: Katie Writer)

“We spent a lot of time going back to the toe of the Ruth glacier, photographing the specific area year after year and seeing how dramatically the receding lines were, as well as observing the collapsing walls,” she adds.

She also tracks what happens downstream. After record rainfall from an atmospheric river in August 2025, she flew over the swollen Talkeetna River and saw entire stretches of bank washed away.

“These weather events with high levels of moisture, in my opinion, are another visual acceleration of erosion.”

These scenes are part of a photographic timeline Writer has spent years assembling. With each flight, she adds a new layer to the growing visual archive that captures the rapid reshaping of Alaska’s wilderness. For those of us on the ground, it’s a rare glimpse at what our world looks like from above.

Exploring a new medium

In time, the stories Writer wanted to tell outgrew both print and pictures. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she launched the All Cooped Up Alaska Podcast, a show born from isolation and the desire to connect. It’s since evolved into the Alaska Climate and Aviation Podcast, where she explores stories of weather, flying and environmental change.

“Being in the air and photographing the landscape feels like artistic movement and is a spiritual experience. The natural world is just stunning,” says Katie Writer. (Photo: Katie Writer)

“The benefit of producing your own podcast is that you get to be as creative as you want and can tell the stories you want to tell,” she says. “A lot of the stories I used to create for our local radio station would be edited down to three and a half minutes for airtime. I was always a little bit frustrated by that.”

Now, Writer brings on regular guests, including prominent Alaskan climatologists Rick Thoman and Brian Brettschneider, to discuss everything from wildfire smoke to Arctic feedback loops. She also covers major events like the Arctic Encounter Symposium in Anchorage.

“Arctic Encounter is attended by world leaders from all around Arctic countries, including Indigenous leaders, policymakers, scientists, villagers and Arctic dwellers,” she says. “It’s a very inspiring event with fascinating panels of people talking about the problems they’re having and solutions they envision.”

Writer has also added a sightseeing business to Visionary Adventures, taking people out on Super Cub Airplane Rides so they can experience the beauty themselves. And these days, her children are her most frequent fliers: "We—my son, Jasper, and daughter, Wren—have also enjoyed soaring above the wilds looking for wild game and fishing spots."

С�� at altitude

Looking back, Writer credits her time at С�� Boulder with helping to shape her worldview.

“One of the primary things that made a major influence on choosing geography as a major was an upper-division course that was in the Arctic Circle, learning field research techniques,” she says.

She also recalls the atmosphere of both Boulder’s scientific community and cultural diversity.

“As a sophomore, our house was across the street from the Hari Krishnas, where we ate a meal a week and enjoyed philosophizing on life and world religions. It was just a really neat place to be,” Writer says. “All of the beautiful architecture and even the Guggenheim building for Geography really held a special place in my heart for a place of learning.”

Her advice for today’s students? Write often.

“Writing is a really important skill that I’m noticing more and more being lost with the use of AI. Getting the pen flowing onto a piece of paper lets you tap into a whole different type of creativity,” she says.

“Realize that you may not know what your whole career is going to be, but don’t be afraid to explore and take a risk in opportunities you might get. When I look back at the journals that I had at that time in my life, I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m doing it,’” she adds.

Even now, after decades of flying and learning to balance the art with the business, Writer isn’t sure where her career will lead next.

“I always aspired to work for National Geographic as a photojournalist,” she says. “And I still haven’t met that goal—but who knows what could happen in the future.”

One thing is certain: Writer has no plans to stop flying over Alaska and documenting its changes.

“Being in the air and photographing the landscape feels like artistic movement and is a spiritual experience,” she says. “The natural world is just stunning.”

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С�� Boulder geography alumnus Katie Writer shares Alaska’s changing landscape from the skies.

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Sanctuary brims with happy tales (and tails)

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Sanctuary brims with happy tales (and tails) Rachel Sauer Tue, 12/02/2025 - 07:30

Clint Talbott

Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary, founded and run by С�� Boulder alumna Jess Osborne and her husband, С�� Boulder Professor Myles Osborne, gives unwanted or neglected animals a safe, comfortable forever home

Why did this chicken cross the road? No one knew. And this was no joke.

Late last month, the chicken was strutting on Magnolia Road in the mountains near Nederland—a place inhabited by coyotes, fox and other canines. Three passersby stopped to help, and, together, they captured the bird by wrapping it in a shirt, whereupon one good Samaritan drove the bird to Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary.

Friends of the sanctuary posted the news to the local Facebook group, called Nedheads, hoping to find the chicken’s owner. No one claimed the bird.

Myles (left) and Jess Osborn founded Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary to rescue "unwanted and discarded animals and provide them with high-quality food and medical care to live out their natural lives.” (Photos: Clint Talbott)

It’s possible that the chicken wandered away from its home, through the forest, to this road. It’s also possible that the bird, which appears to be a rooster, was dumped on the side of the road because it won’t produce eggs. (Discarding roosters is common.)

Jess and Myles Osborne, who founded the sanctuary, have adopted the rooster and named it Chamonix, after the resort town in France. Like his namesake, Chamonix is striking, but why name a bird after a town? Thereby hangs a tale.

Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit launched in 2021 by Jess, who graduated in 2005 from the University of Colorado Boulder with degrees in communication and fine arts, and Myles, С�� Boulder associate professor of history.

The sanctuary, just south of Magnolia Road west of Boulder, aims to rescue “unwanted and discarded animals and provide them with high-quality food and medical care to live out their natural lives.”

On the sanctuary’s 23-acre parcel, more than two-dozen animals—horses, pigs, goats, ducks, dogs, plus a cat, yak, donkey, turkey and, now, chicken—enjoy lives they otherwise would not have had.

And an oink-oink here…

Consider the pigs, named Bolton and Berlin, which a friend of the Osbornes noticed wandering on another roadside near Nederland. The pigs had broken out of their home because they were starving and didn’t have water, and their owner gave the OK to take the pigs. Bolton and Berlin now sleep, snort and snuffle, in the sanctuary’s loving embrace.

Each animal has a backstory.

Wilbur, a dog named for Wilbur, Washington, came to the sanctuary after his foster family refused to put him down, against the advice of three veterinarians, to join his biological brother, Ziggy, named after Zagazig, Egypt.

Chamonix the (suspected) rooster came to Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary in October after being found strutting alone on Magnolia Road near Nederland; attempts to find an owner were unsuccessful.

The brothers were both born with the same neurological disorder. Wilbur also has a dog version of Wilson’s disease, which makes him retain excessive amounts of copper. He takes medicine to remove copper from his blood.

Wilbur was in a wheelchair but now can walk, though unsteadily. Ziggy suffers from spells resembling seizures that prevented him from walking or standing at least 30 times a day. He often had to be carried.

Wilbur and Ziggy are clearly happy, though, and Jess dubs them the “wiggle brothers.”

Talkeetna (Alaska), a yak usually called “Tallie,” was born prematurely and was unlikely to survive. She was donated to the sanctuary, which took her to Colorado State University and gave her a shot at survival. These days, Tallie is hale and hearty and hangs around with the goats. She seems to enjoy gently headbutting people who walk by.

London and Brooklyn are mini horses who had been awfully neglected. Both had severely overgrown hooves when they were rescued from a kill pen at auction. Brooklyn had suffered some kind of trauma when she was younger, and her left eye has been removed once at Tails to give her the same standard of care as humans and dogs.

Both mini horses love being taken for walks and chomping as much roadside grass as possible in the broad meadow that sits under a stunning vista featuring James Peak, South and North Arapahoe Peaks.

A herd of elk often gathers nearby, drawing curious glances from many of the animals, perhaps none more than Rio, a 2,000-pound draft horse whose head is higher than the eaves of the sanctuary.

Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary provides a loving home and high-quality care to animals in need and creates a welcoming place for humans to experience the love, joy and healing of connecting with animals.

When Tails adopted her from a rescue in Montana, Rio had a crooked foot and still needed extensive veterinary care to make sure she was comfortable and could walk comfortably. Now, she’s playful and mischievous, sometimes inadvertently crushing pieces of the aluminum fencing around the horses’ area.

Animals soothe the human psyche

Jess Osborne has always loved animals. As a kid in Gunbarrel, she collected the critters her mother could afford (and their home could accommodate): frogs, geckos, chickens and dogs.

Animals helped her feel better, much better. She has grappled with ADHD and anxiety since childhood. As she speaks, her focus can drift into several sometimes-related topics.

Jess Osborne with Tallie the yak (left) and Wilbur the dog.

But focusing on animals is no problem. “Even though I can’t remember history or make it through any of Myles’ books without falling asleep, when it comes to medicines and animal care and stuff like that, I go down the hyper-focusing tunnel,” she told The Colorado Sun.

And the animals helped other people, too, Jess noticed. Nine years ago, when she was working at a nursing and memory-care facility in Boulder, Jess brought her dogs Dublin and Brisbane. The residents loved the dogs.

After adopting Brisbane and Dublin, who died in 2023, Jess and Myles adopted a bunny and, later, the mini horses.

This was the seed of an idea: Elderly people often can’t care for (or aren’t allowed to have) pets. Unwanted and abused animals need forever homes where they can live their best lives. And rescued animals can bring comfort and joy to people who—for many reasons—don’t have animals in their lives.

This was true for Jess’ grandmother, whom Jess and Myles took care of and who died in 2021. It was also true for a neighbor’s boy, who was on the autism spectrum.

He rode and brushed the horses to build core strength and fine motor skills. Occupational and physical therapists have shown that movement and interaction with horses can improve physical, cognitive and emotional well-being in people with varying conditions.

In the career world, Jess had not found her place, but launching an animal sanctuary was her calling. She and Myles bought the sanctuary’s current home, which is large enough to allow the sanctuary to help more animals and humans. There, they have room for large horses and the rest of the menagerie.

But what to call the sanctuary? Happy Tails wasn’t quite right. Given Myles’ extensive travel and his English background, Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary seemed to fit, even though the place is not Dickensian.

The name reflects the fact that both Jess and Myles love to read and travel.

Of course, the place, which had been a regular home with a two-car garage and a large deck, had to be converted to serve its primary residents, the animals. The garage was turned into a barn, and an additional shelter for the goats was built adjacent to the newly fashioned barn.

Myles Osborne with several of the eight goats, who often lounge on the sunny deck and fall asleep, snoring.

A sunny enclosure next to the deck serves as a warm spot for the pigs and sometimes the eight goats, who often lounge on the sunny deck and fall asleep, snoring.

Below the deck, the chicken, Chamonix, the newest feathered child, and ducks (Louise, Abe and Albie, after Lake Louise and Lake Abraham, Canada, and Lake Albert, Uganda) have their own petite house called the Duck Tails Saloon, which resembles an Old West bar, next to a small fenced area.

Jess, Myles and sanctuary volunteers build and mend fences, string electric fencing (which keeps big horses in and bears out), fashion goat playgrounds, and spend their days raking muck, preparing special food for two-dozen different palates and attending to the animals’ medical needs.

Being as bold as your dreams

It’s a lot of work and, no doubt, a fair amount of stress. As he talks about this, however, Myles’ demeanor remains steady and calm, just as it does when he discusses the history of colonialism in Africa, the necessary steps to refashion a horse fence or his attempted climb of Mount Everest, which he abandoned in the “death zone” to save a man’s life.

Myles suggests that the decision to start a sanctuary was a no-brainer:

“If you have a dream and something that you are excited about, you have to lean into it. And if you are in your early 40s and financially secure, if you're not gonna do it, then when are you gonna do it?”

He observes: “I do think that generally when people are brave and people lean into things that seem intimidating, it works itself out. … And why not be brave? Why not go for it? And it clearly is Jess’ passion in life. It's what she was put on the earth to do, very clearly. So it wasn't that tough of a decision.

“Now, keeping the numbers reasonable is a bit more of an ongoing conversation,” he adds. There are bills for veterinarians, racks of hay, tons of animal feed, walls of sawdust (for sleeping and padding) and more. The operation is 40% self-funded (down from 70% self-funded last year).

But it’s worth it, they say.

The couple still visit elder-care facilities in which there will be 25 or 30 people in wheelchairs in a circle. “And we just release 2,000 pounds of goats and yak and the dogs. And they all know exactly how to behave, how careful they need to be. And (the animals) will walk around the circle, they will greet everybody, everyone pets them.”

Tallie the yak was born prematurely and given scant odds of survival, but these days she is hale and hearty and hangs around with the goats. She seems to enjoy gently headbutting people who walk by.

Myles also relates a story about a blind woman who came to the sanctuary and walked onto the deck. Goats quickly crowded around her. The woman petted them and marveled aloud that four goats were pressing into her.

Myles told her there were actually six goats. Goats (seeking treats) can become pushy around fully able-bodied people, but they took it easy on this visitor.

“And then we said to her that there has actually been a 500-pound yak who has been two yards away from you for the past 15 minutes, who clearly understands that you have some issue that she's not familiar with and she's holding back and she's waiting.”

The animals, he adds, “understand instinctively when people are old or disabled or young or blind or something, they get it.” And for the woman, the experience was “profound.”

The next horizon

Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary has more its leaders hope to do. Chief among them is to build a “proper” barn that has more room for the animals, whose design facilitates feeding, cleaning, visitors’ experiences and volunteers’ work.

While that’s on the horizon, more immediate tasks remain. On a recent evening, Myles and three volunteers worked to rearrange and refashion the fence that keeps the horses from wandering away and separates the minis from the large horses and Murphy, the donkey.

As Myles worked here and there, tools usually in hand, Stanley, the turkey (named for Istanbul), followed Myles around.

Stanley came from a backyard homestead whose owners didn’t have the heart to slaughter him. And no wonder. Jess describes him as “the friendliest turkey on Earth.”

Stanley’s gobble, a cheerful trilling song, often punctuates the background sounds of barks, whinnies, bleats, clucks and snorts. Stanley tends to follow people around the sanctuary.

With Myles in the horse pen, Stanley performed some “turkey dances,” with Myles’ gentle encouragement and praise.

So there they were, human and animal, working and strutting, talking and gobbling. Two tales as one.

Learn more about Tails of Two Cities Sanctuary at this link.

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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 С�� Boulder pre-med students majoring in integrative physiology and participating in the Miramontes Arts and Sciences Program. Last year, they decided to raise money for scholarships for students at their alma mater high school.

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

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

Fast forward several years, and they’re both pre-med students majoring in integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder. 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 С�� Boulder.

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

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

‘Let’s just try’

In Summer 2024, Gordon and Woods participated in Startup Summer through the С�� 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 С�� 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 С�� 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)

Why Skinner Myers isn’t chasing Hollywood glory

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Why Skinner Myers isn’t chasing Hollywood glory Rachel Sauer Wed, 11/19/2025 - 07:30

Cody DeBos

The С�� Boulder Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts assistant professor is finding success as an independent filmmaker

When Skinner Myers shoots a movie, he doesn’t need a Hollywood backlot, a multi-million-dollar budget or even a month-long shooting schedule. For Myers, a career in film isn’t about glitz and glam. It’s an opportunity to tell stories he’s passionate about while adhering to a moral code.

That dedication to his craft has carried him on a lengthy path full of unexpected twists to who he is today: an award-winning filmmaker and recipient of the prestigious Amplifier Fellowship.

“I submitted an original pilot and I got selected. It’s really opened up my network to individuals that I probably could reach as … an indie filmmaker professor,” Myers says of the opportunity. “So, it’s been good. The timing has been really good.”

Skinner Myers, a С�� Boulder assistant professor of cinema studies and moving image arts, recently received an Amplifier Fellowship from Film Independent.

He’s currently in the middle of two projects, including Tragic Boogie, a pro-wrestling crime drama, and a feature film called Mood Swing Whiskey.

“We shot the latter in March of this year in Los Angeles during С��’s spring break. It’s a slow-cinema, avant-garde horror thriller shot on black-and-white Super 16 film,” he says.

Earlier this year, another of Myers’ films premiered at the Berlin Critics Week film festival and was quickly picked up by a distributor, with a release planned for 2026.

But for Myers, an assistant professor of cinema studies and moving image arts at the University of Colorado Boulder, these are more than artistic milestones. He sees each one as proof that it’s still possible to make bold, personal work outside the traditional Hollywood system.

Rewriting his own script

Myers didn’t originally set out to be a filmmaker. In fact, he spent much of his early career pursuing gigs on the other side of the camera.

“I was originally an actor, starting at the age of 18,” he says.

He moved to New York City to study acting, performed in off-Broadway plays and started a band. After 9/11, he relocated to Los Angeles in search of commercial work but found the industry disheartening.

“I got quickly disillusioned with the idea of making it as an actor,” Myers recalls.

Rather than ending the story there, Myers decided to pick up the camera for himself. He began experimenting with documentaries, including a self-financed trip to Uganda to shoot a vérité-style doc in the slums of Kampala.

“After that, I applied to film school, which was a big change for me, because this entire time I was an actor, I didn’t know much about filming,” he says.

“I remember one of the teachers who had seen my feature doc during the admissions process asked me, ‘Why do you want to come to film school? You’re already making films.’ At the time I didn’t really understand the question, which I do now, but I wanted connections, so I went anyway,” he adds.

After stints in graduate school, work on the TV series True Detective, and a job teaching film to middle and high schoolers, Myers began producing short films on the side. Eventually, he landed a full-time role at Loyola Marymount University, which allowed him to finance his first feature, The Sleeping Negro, shot in just six days and on a $40,000 budget.

The film went on to play at Slamdance in 2021, receive coverage in the Los Angeles Times, and score a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes after being screened in 20 countries.

Filmmaker Skinner Myers shot his film The Sleeping Negro in just six days and on a $40,000 budget. It went on to play at Slamdance in 2021, receive coverage in the Los Angeles Times and score a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes after being screened in 20 countries. (Photo: Josiah Myers)

“It won lots of awards, and that was when I started to apply for tenure-track positions outside of LA, just because LA was really expensive for my growing family,” Myers said.

His momentum carried him to Boulder and gave him the confidence to keep shooting films.

A radical approach to independent cinema

Myers is committed to a filmmaking approach he describes as deeply personal, politically intentional and structurally independent.

“One of the things that makes my approach unique is the lack of resources I’ve had,” he says. “I’ve never had more than six days to make a feature.”

Efficiency—often forced by that lack of resources—is reflected in his poignant, narrative-driving scripts and his low shooting ratio. One thing he splurges on is shooting exclusively on film. These decisions are as much logistical as they are part of his larger philosophy on telling a meaningful story, Myers says.

“I’m also a huge fan of the Black radical cinematic traditions that come before me,” he says, citing the influence of Oscar Micheaux, Haile Gerima and Charles Burnett.

“I want to create films that connect the traditions from the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s to today, because I feel like that bridge has not been connected,” he adds. “These are the things I think about as I’m writing, as I’m thinking through visuals, as I’m thinking about characters, making something that is not only equitable to the crew and cast financially, but is unique in its own way.”

His latest project, Tragic Boogie, is a crime thriller set in the world of professional wrestling.

“We just finished the script on that one. I’m really stoked on it because I think it’s something that, for pro wrestling fans, they’ll totally attach to, but it’s still me and still the type of film I want to make,” Myers says.

Thematically, the film explores how bodies, especially those of Black athletes, are commodified and discarded in entertainment industries.

Myers also sees it as a community project.

“Really, my goal is to make the film here in Denver and really try to bring the local community together and have everyone involved, and even have some students involved,” he says.

Amplifying voices from screen to classroom

Earlier this year, Myers received an Amplifier Fellowship from Film Independent, a nonprofit arts organization that supports emerging filmmakers. The program, sponsored by Netflix, is designed to elevate underrepresented voices in film.

“I try to use my work to show students that, ‘Hey, this is totally doable.’ I try to bring in these real-world experiences as they’re happening to me. And I’m very candid and open with my students."

“It’s been great,” Myers says. “Materialistically, I got financial support. But more importantly, I’ve gotten some new mentors in my life who really understand what I’m trying to do.”

“They have a lot more experience than I do. They’re a lot older. And that’s been really nice, getting some of that wisdom and guidance,” he adds.

The fellowship also has given him precious time. It’s a gift he’s using to write, to collaborate and to think about what kind of artist and educator he wants to be as his career continues to develop.

At С�� Boulder, Myers sees filmmaking and teaching as two parts of a whole. He makes a point to include students in real productions and to demystify the business side of the industry by sharing real stories from his own work and that of his colleagues.

“I try to use my work to show students that, ‘Hey, this is totally doable,’” he says. “I try to bring in these real-world experiences as they’re happening to me. And I’m very candid and open with my students.

“I’ve made three features at this point. I’ve gone through the distribution process (and) the festival process,” he says. “That way, they can see, all right, there’s a way to balance some type of life where you make money and your artistic life.”

Staying true to the story

As for what’s next, Myers is passionate about continuing to create projects that don’t always fit into a press kit.

“I’m not trying to make a Hollywood film; that doesn’t interest me,” he says.

He also encourages young filmmakers to choose their medium with purpose and not to be afraid of change.

“There are a lot of artistic mediums out there other than film,” he says. “So, really know why you need to use that medium to say what you want to say and not something else.”

And if that calling ever changes?

“It’s OK to not do this forever,” he says. “Maybe you say what you want to say in five films. It’s OK to say, ‘OK, I’m going to do something else in my life.’ That’s totally OK.”

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The С�� Boulder Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts assistant professor is finding success as an independent filmmaker.

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Top image: Skinner Myers in his film The Sleeping Negro (Photo: Josiah Myers)

Meet the scientist who stumbled into the cold—and stayed

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 14:30:00 +0000

Meet the scientist who stumbled into the cold—and stayed Rachel Sauer Mon, 11/17/2025 - 07:30

Clint Talbott

John Cassano, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at С�� Boulder, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and fellow at CIRES, recently returned from his 15th research trip to Antarctica

The first time John Cassano flew to Antarctica, he found the 12-hour commercial flight from Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand, uncomfortable. Then he boarded a C-130 cargo plane bound for Antarctica.

“Put me on a commercial plane in a middle seat for 12 hours,” he says, chuckling. “I’ll take that over being in a cargo plane any day.”

John Cassano, a С�� Boulder professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and self-described "weather weenie," has been pursuing research in Antarctica since 1994.

That was January 1994. Cassano was 25 and a graduate student who had agreed to work on a project installing weather stations in Greenland and Antarctica. He figured he’d go once, check Antarctica off his list and move on with life. Thirty years later, he’s still going back.

Cassano did not plan to be a polar researcher. Growing up in New York, he imagined a career in architecture—something tangible, predictable. But a freshman weather class at Montana State University changed everything. “I decided architecture wasn’t for me.”

Meteorology seemed a better fit. Montana State didn’t offer meteorology, so Cassano earned an earth science degree and headed to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, intending to study storms. Then came an invitation from Charles Stearns, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, asking if Cassano would be interested in working on a project in Antarctica.

“I had no real interest in the polar regions,” Cassano admits. “But I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to go to Antarctica once.”

That “once” became a career. After two field seasons with Stearns, Cassano pursued a PhD at the University of Wyoming, focusing on Antarctic meteorology. Today, as a professor in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, he has lived about a year in Antarctica over the course of 15 trips there.

Cassano is also lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and a fellow at С�� Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

'A weather weenie at heart'

The science keeps him coming back. Cassano’s work explores how the atmosphere behaves in Earth’s most extreme environments—knowledge that underpins climate models and weather forecasts worldwide.

The adventure is also alluring. “I’m a weather weenie at heart,” he says. “I like experiencing extremes—strong winds, big snowstorms, really cold temperatures. Antarctica gives me that.”

He recalls standing in minus 56°F air, frostbite nipping his fingers as he launched drones. “I enjoy experiencing those conditions,” he says. “I wouldn’t want to camp in a tent for months like the early explorers, but I like the challenge.”

John Cassano (right) and then-fellow graduate student Mark Seefeldt (left), now a research scientist in Cassano's group at CIRES, on their first trip to Antarctica in 1994. (Photo: John Cassano)

Cassano’s contributions have helped reshape polar science. In 2009, he led the first U.S.-funded drone research campaign in Antarctica, opening new ways to measure the atmosphere where traditional instruments fall short.

“Drones let us probe the boundary layer—the part of the atmosphere that exchanges heat and moisture with the surface,” he explains. “That’s critical for understanding climate.”

Earlier, as a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State University, Cassano helped modernize Antarctic weather forecasting. The Antarctic Mesoscale Prediction System, launched in 2001, transformed flight safety.

“When I started going down in the ’90s, forecasters were confident about eight hours out,” he says. “Now it’s five days. That’s huge.”

That’s a big change for several reasons, not the least of which is that an eight-hour forecast could change from the time a plane left Christchurch, New Zealand, and got closer to Antarctica. Planes often had to turn around mid-flight back then, Cassano recalls.

Witnessing dramatic changes

Cassano has witnessed dramatic changes in three decades of research.

Arctic sea ice has declined about 40 percent in recent decades. Antarctic sea ice, once at record highs, now hovers at record lows. Ice shelves are collapsing.

“These changes matter,” he says. “They alter the temperature gradient between the tropics and poles, which drives global weather. Even if you never go to the polar regions, it affects the storms you experience.”

Meanwhile, fieldwork isn’t all adventure. “Emotionally, it’s hard,” Cassano says. “When I was single, I didn’t mind being gone for months. Now, being away from my wife and daughter is tough.”

Comforts are few: shared dorm rooms, institutional food and the knowledge that if something happens at home, he can’t leave. “Once you’re there in August, you’re stuck until October.”

But Cassano treasures the Antarctic community—a self-selecting group of scientists and support staff who thrive in isolation. “You don’t wind up in Antarctica by mistake,” he says.

“Everyone wants to be there. Contractors work six-month stints and spend the rest of the year traveling. It’s like living in a travelogue.”

Kara Hartig (left), CIRES visiting fellow postdoc, and John Cassano (right), in Antarctica during the 2025 research season. (Photo: John Cassano)

He loves the stories: a mechanic who spent his off-season trekking through South America, a cook who had just returned from hiking in Nepal. “You hear all these amazing experiences,” Cassano says. “It’s like living inside a travel magazine.”

Behind every scientific breakthrough lies a vast support system. “I can focus on science because others make sure I have food, water, transportation and a warm place to sleep,” Cassano says. “That infrastructure is critical.”

Cassano worries about the cost of fieldwork and the ripple effects of recent disruptions. “Field projects are expensive,” he says. “COVID and a major McMurdo Station rebuild created a backlog. My project was supposed to be in the field in 2021—we went in 2025. NSF is still catching up.”

Federal priorities are a concern in the current political climate, but Cassano suggests that Antarctic research might be less vulnerable than other kinds of federally sponsored science.

“Antarctic research has always had a geopolitical dimension,” Cassano notes. “The Antarctic Treaty encourages nations to maintain scientific programs. It’s how you keep a seat at the table.”

Constant curiosity

For Cassano, mentoring is particularly rewarding. “I love bringing new people down,” he says. “Seeing Antarctica through their eyes makes me excited again.” On his latest trip, he watched a young researcher, Kara Hartig, CIRES visiting fellow postdoc, as she experienced the ice for the first time. “Her enthusiasm reminded me why I do this.”

That excitement ripples outward. After Cassano shared photos in class, a former student emailed, saying, “I’m on my way to Antarctica to work as a chef at McMurdo,” the largest research station on the continent.

“He just wanted to experience it,” Cassano says. “I think that’s awesome.”

Cassano’s curiosity remains undiminished. On his latest trip, when drones failed to arrive, he improvised with van-mounted sensors, uncovering puzzling temperature swings across the ice shelf.

What might we learn from the data? “It hints at important processes,” he says. “Now we need to go back and figure out why.”

After three decades, Cassano still marvels at the complexity of the atmosphere—and the urgency of understanding it. “Increasing our knowledge is broadly beneficial,” he says. “And for me, it’s just fascinating.”

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Top image: Sunset over the Royal Society Range (background), sea ice in McMurdo Sound (mid-ground) and McMurdo Station from John Cassano's 2025 Antarctic trip. (Photo: John Cassano)

Players roll the dice on the healing power of collaborative fantasy

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 22:22:42 +0000

Players roll the dice on the healing power of collaborative fantasy Rachel Sauer Fri, 11/07/2025 - 15:22

Cody DeBos

At the D&D table, says С�� Boulder humanities scholar and gaming podcast host Andrew Gilbert, everyone has a voice

You can often find Andrew Gilbert behind a cardboard dungeon master’s screen, scheming up new ways to derail the carefully laid plans of the other players at his Dungeons & Dragons table. The game has been part of his life for decades, and as D&D gains a larger foothold in the mainstream, it has also become a powerful avenue for friends to connect, laugh and heal.

“It’s such a fascinating way to connect people through story. But it’s a story with limitations and rules,” says Gilbert, a teaching assistant professor of humanities, game studies and media at the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts.

In September, Wizards of the Coast studios released Heroes of the Borderlands, the game’s most expansive beginner-friendly box set yet. It arrives with the goal of helping a new generation of players roll their first d20s.

Andrew Gilbert is a С�� Boulder teaching assistant professor of humanities, game studies and media in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts.

Gilbert and a group of friends have been doing so together since 2018, broadcasting play sessions from their campaigns online via the Goats & Dragons and Helpful Goat Presents podcasts.

“When we created the show, we knew we wanted to play games in a way that centered player experiences and collaborative storytelling,” he says.

The group’s campaign is now approaching the end of a years-long adventure, which has included guests like The Lord of the Rings actor Dominic Monaghan along the way.

The hobby has brought them closer together and created no shortage of memorable moments. But that’s just one facet of Gilbert’s connection to Dungeons & Dragons.

After years of rolling dice and telling stories, he’s come to see the game as something far bigger than fantasy. But why does D&D, a game first published in the 1970s, still captivate us today? How can a tabletop game rooted in imagination compete with video games, AI content, and near-constant digital simulation?

Gilbert has a few ideas.

Still captivating after 50 years

At its heart, D&D is a storytelling engine. Unlike books or movies with fixed narratives, tabletop roleplaying games ask players to improvise solutions, make moral decisions, and stay in character. Players sit around a table (or communicate virtually) and collaborate to tell a story where no one knows how it will end.

“It’s a fascinating form of media where, to a certain extent, the audience are the creators of the media at the same time,” he says. “There’s something wild and magical and fun about giving up control of a story to the group and to chance itself with die rolls.”

Gilbert first encountered D&D through a cousin who taught him to play when he was just 7 years old.

“I was hooked right away,” he recalls.

Years later, as both a scholar of games and a long-time player, Gilbert is fascinated by the emotional and social experiences D&D fosters. No longer seen as just an escapist fantasy game, D&D has become a catalyst for community building.

“There are social and emotional dynamics happening in every game,” he says.

That community is what makes Dungeons & Dragons so special, says С�� Boulder scholar Andrew Gilbert; whether players are battling monsters in an imagined fantasy world or conquering their own internal demons, the table becomes a shared space where anything can happen. (Illustration: Wizards of the Coast)

At the same time, D&D is incredibly accessible for newcomers. Today, with an updated rule set and a plethora of digital tools to simplify the experience, that’s truer than ever, Gilbert says.

“Literally, you can know nothing about Dungeons & Dragons, and I can teach you how to play by just doing it. All you have to do is tell me what your character wants to do, and then someone who knows the rules can say, ‘Great, roll this dice, add this number to it.’ You really don’t even need to know the rules before you start playing,” he says.

He believes that’s a big reason why the game has endured for half a century and is still growing.

“A lot of us were worried the growth we saw in 2015 and 2016 was a fad that would sort of fade. But then we got the pandemic, and a lot of people started playing as a way to connect with friends when there was nothing to do but play games at home. And, of course, you have a ton of content creators making content about the game professionally,” he says.

“It’s just a perfect storm of factors that have shot the popularity of D&D through the roof.”

Healing through character

Sometimes, though, the game is about more than enjoyment or even storytelling. For many, D&D and games like it have become tools for healing from past traumas or building crucial social skills in a safe environment, Gilbert says.

“There are so many stories about people using the game to work through trauma, including some really cool research about games and PTSD specifically. You can just not be you for a little bit,” he says. “I’m not always a proponent of pure escapism, but it releases a tension. Whether you’re remembering your character doing something or remembering something that actually happened, your brain goes through the exact same process.”

He adds, “With D&D, you can create all these beneficial, healthy memories of not being the victim of some trauma but the one who solves the problem.”

"There’s so much good. The act of collaboration, of creation, of working through issues in the game. It’s something we talk about in my class a lot. These things are hard to navigate, but it’s incredibly helpful to learn how to navigate them."

Gilbert also acknowledges how roleplaying games like Dungeons & Dragons can be deeply meaningful to people who don’t always find social interaction intuitive.

“The idea of how to just construct scenes and conversations is really, really helpful for individuals on the autism spectrum,” he says.

Part of that comes from the game’s structure. Unlike everyday conversation, which can be unpredictable and overwhelming, D&D provides a clear set of rules and roles.

“There’s an element of learning how to pass the microphone, which on a very basic level is just good practice for conversation,” Gilbert says.

Indeed, research suggests that D&D and similar games can be used therapeutically to build communication skills, reduce stress, and foster a sense of community among people who may struggle to connect.

That community, Gilbert says, is what makes the game so special. Whether players are battling monsters in an imagined fantasy world or conquering their own internal demons, the table becomes a shared space where anything can happen.

“There’s so much good. The act of collaboration, of creation, of working through issues in the game. It’s something we talk about in my class a lot. These things are hard to navigate, but it’s incredibly helpful to learn how to navigate them,” he says.

As new players crack open Heroes of the Borderlands or learn the game from a friend, they become part of a decades-long tradition that values creativity and connection in a world that is too often devoid of these qualities, Gilbert says, adding, “We keep finding new amazing things about this game, and it’s only getting better. The possibilities are just limitless.”

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At the D&D table, says С�� Boulder humanities scholar and gaming podcast host Andrew Gilbert, everyone has a voice.

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