COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
Attention, Behavior, and Learning Clinic
Assistant Professor Erik Willcutt and Research Associate Nomita Chhabildas, Department of Psychology
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: disadvantaged families with low income levels who could not otherwise afford evaluation for their children
This project provides a low to no-cost evaluation of children with learning disabilities, ADHD, and other possible childhood disorders from local low income families. Professor Willcutt is very involved in the clinic and recently incorporated a research component into the project. Graduate students provide assessment and testing of clients, for which they receive clinical practicum credit. This opportunity is very popular among the department’s graduate students, who highly value the direct experience. For more information on the Raimy Psychological Clinic Child Assessment website.
Colorado History Day
Professor Peter Boag, Department of History
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: 700 students in grades 6-12 from communities across Colorado
This yearlong humanities education program culminates with the annual statewide competition on the Boulder campus, home of the state Colorado History Day (CHD) office. The interdisciplinary program promotes historical inquiry, knowledge, and understanding among middle and high school students. It has an important influence on the way history is taught and learned at the K-12 level by challenging students to conduct meaningful research in a positive learning environment. The program was expanded last year to include a web site, Spanish speaking entries, and three, for-credit internships for CU-Boulder undergraduates. For more information visit the Colorado History Day website.
Colorado History Day Outreach to San Luis Valley Schools
Professor Peter Boag and Assistant Professor Lucy Chester, Department of History
Award: $4,700
Target Audience: approximately 70 middle and high school students and 20 teachers from schools across Colorado’s San Luis Valley
Colorado History Day is a yearlong humanities education program that culminates with the annual statewide competition on the Boulder campus, home of the Colorado History Day office. This award specifically funds work with San Luis Valley middle and high schools to introduce these promising young students to the possibility of higher education and to develop their skills of historical research and exposition. Students and teachers from the valley are hosted on campus during the two-day competition to observe and to participate in numerous special activities designed to engage them in future Colorado History Day contests. For more information visit the Colorado History Day website.
Colorado Math Circle for Advanced High School Students
Associate Professor Congming Li and Associate Chair and Senior Instructor Anne Dougherty, Department of Applied Math
Award: $4,200
Target Audience: mathematically talented high school students from Denver and Boulder
This proposal seeks to establish a Colorado Math Circle to meet monthly with faculty on the Boulder campus and the best young math minds in Colorado. The circle will offer interested high school students adventures in mathematical problem solving that challenge them to use creativity and ingenuity to tackle difficult problems. Many high school students are not challenged by their regular math courses at school and often times math teachers cannot keep up with young minds that exhibit mathematical maturity and understanding far beyond their years. The Math Circle will also serve an advisory role on issues around math careers, summer math programs, independent study options, recommended texts, etc. The project features a Colorado Math Circle website for circle members and other interested students from across Colorado.
Dance Outreach Initiatives
Associate Professor Nada Diachenko, Department of Theatre and Dance
Award: $16,000 for 2nd of 2 years
Target Audience: K-12 audiences throughout the state of Colorado
This project combines three departmental outreach initiatives to establish an enhanced and ongoing interaction among the faculty and students of the Dance Program with the public in Colorado. Project goals include bringing the work of the faculty directly to K-12 students across Colorado, encouraging youth of many backgrounds to consider careers in dance, educating K-12 faculty and students about the variety of approaches to the dance arts, and nurturing a vital level of interaction among various populations of Colorado and the Dance Program’s work. The project also includes a week-long tour through rural Colorado, this past year in northeastern Colorado communities, the previous four years focused on communities in the San Luis Valley. For more information visit the Dance Program outreach website.
Essential Conflict Insights: a Guide for Dealing with Everyday Conflicts
Research Associates Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess, Conflict Research Consortium
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: citizens and community groups across Colorado
This project establishes a resource tool that highlights engaging, multimedia, web-based lessons about “the things everybody ought to know about conflict” and a how-to-guide to approaching conflict more constructively. These simple lessons, which can easily be enhanced by the Conflict Research Consortium’s more academic and in-depth materials, would employ a variety of advanced, online instructional techniques to make it easy, fast, and fun to master ideas capable or making a real, positive difference in people’s abilities to handle day-to-day conflict. For more information visit the Conflict Research Consortium website.
Girls at the Museum Exploring Science (GAMES): An after-school program at the CU Museum
Professor Deane Bowers, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology/Museum and Field Studies
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: seven groups of fifteen 4th and 5th grade girls from Boulder Valley Schools
The project hosts elementary school girls on campus for an after-school experience in the museum and an associated lab facility. Girls sit down with researchers to discuss and explore their work in the lab, how the researchers decided to become a scientist, and their educational background. Participants are recruited from a single local school for each program in order to build confidence in the girls (since they will be attending with their friends) that will lead to a more dynamic exchange with the scientists. The museum hosts seven separate programs each year, therefore, reaching seven different local schools. The girls participate in hands-on activities with the faculty scientists after their discussion and a behind-the-scenes tour. This is the program’s third year. For more information visit the CU Museum website.
Interactive Displays and Animations of Colorado Geology for the CU Museum
Professor Paul Weimer, Department of Geological Sciences, in conjunction with the CU Museum
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: public visitors to the museum, as well as local elementary school group tours
This project develops interactive displays designed to educate the general public about the geologic record. By using these displays and animations, key points of geologic processes and history can be far better illustrated and made more meaningful to general audiences: (a) continuous change in climate; (b) continuous change in landscapes; (c) continuous change in the processes that affect the landscape (e.g. rivers, lakes, sand dunes and oceans); (d) continuous change in the tectonic forces affecting an area; (e) continuous change in the life forms; (f) significant portions of geologic history missing between various rock layers; and (g) linking geologic time and the evolution of all of the above changing factors. For more information visit the Interactive Geologic Atlas website.
INVST and Project YES: Stage Three in Cultivating “Active Learners, Active Citizens”
Director and Instructor Seana Lowe
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: K-12 teachers and school administrators from Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley Schools, and surrounding communities
This project is dedicated to empowering young people to create positive social change in their lives and in their communities. The program offers a series of professional development workshops for teachers to introduce service learning as a tool for school and community reform and establish a dialogue on leadership development and youth voice. The workshops blend theory and practice as participants gain the principles of service learning curriculum design through direct instruction, the testimonies of nonprofit representatives, and active engagement in community service. This third stage of the program adds a workshop featuring the implementation of arts-based service learning programming and expansion into St. Vrain Valley schools. For more information visit the INVST Community Studies website.
Museum Outreach Science Training (MOST)
Assistant Professor Dena Smith, Department of Geological Sciences and Curator of Paleontology at the CU Museum
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: sixteen 4th and 5th grade teachers from Boulder Valley Schools (BVSD)
This project provides BVSD teachers with a two-day, intensive teacher training program at the museum. Teachers will be recruited to the program from Title I schools and receive one credit hour for their participation. After incorporating this training into their curriculum, teachers will then bring their classes back to the Museum for a paleontology tour and fossil workshop. Samantha Messier (formerly from the BSI Science Squad), is BVSD’s K-8th Grade Science Curriculum Coordinator, and will recruit teachers for this program. For more information visit the CU Museum website.
Robert D. Sutherland Center for the Evaluation and Treatment of Bipolar Disorder
Professor David Miklowitz, Professor and Chair W. Edward Craighead, and Research Associate Alisha Brosse, Department of Psychology
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: disadvantaged families with low income levels who could not otherwise comprehensive care for their children
The Center offers people who are financially unable to obtain comprehensive psychological and psychiatric services in the community greatly reduced fees or free services. The project involves weekly case conferences with graduate student therapists and the Center director. The Center also covers laboratory costs which are a key component to providing expert psychiatric care to its patients, most of who cannot afford the lab work and therefore the comprehensive care. For more information visit the Robert D. Sutherland Memorial Foundation website.
Saturday Physics Series
Professor John Cumalat, Department of Physics
Award: $3,500
Target Audience: Colorado high school students and teachers and adults
Through five public presentations, this program highlights research and the application of physical sciences, while exposing high school students and the community to the research of some of CU-Boulder’s best physical sciences faculty. Subject matter includes topics in liquid crystals; condensed matter physics; atomic, molecular and optical physics; and nuclear physics. Each program is videotaped and made available to science teachers across Colorado. For more information visit the Saturday Physics website.
Secrets of Polynesian Navigation
Professor John Stocke, Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and Professor Paul Shankman, Department of Anthropology
Award: $3,400
Target Audience: general audiences of all ages
This proposal presents the basics of Polynesian navigation through a Fiske Planetarium program. It is a continuation of a Fiske series around indigenous cultures that Professor Stocke has created during the past several years. He hopes to bring a Polynesian navigator to campus for two or more public presentations. If that component is not possible, Professor Stocke will travel to the source and film a navigation for use during the Fiske presentations. For more information visit the Fiske Planetarium website.
A Day of Teaching, Learning, and Community (TLC)
Professor Dennis Van Gerven, Department of Anthropology
Award: $3,000
Target Audience: alumni, friends, CU-Boulder and K-12 students and community members
For the second year in a row the CU-Boulder Honors Students Advisory Committee has challenged Dr. Van Gerven to a teach-a-thon in an effort to raise money for three local charities: the Boulder County AIDS Project, the People’s Clinic, and Boulder County Safehouse. Van Gerven is widely known for his work exhuming more than 400 mummies in northern Sudan and bringing them back to CU-Boulder in 1979. Several of those mummies, which are normally stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room in the Hale Science building, make special appearances at the TLC event. Van Gerven lectures from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 a.m. and has raised several thousand dollars through voluntary contributions from the event’s audiences. For more information visit the Anthropology department website.
Understanding War through the Eyes of Children from Palestinian Refugee Camps and Israeli Settlements
Professor George Rivera, Department of Art and Art History
Award: $1,000
Target Audience: elementary school children and their teachers from Metro Denver
This project creates a children’s booklet for use in a northwest Denver elementary school. The booklet will be used in two classrooms at the school to develop a teaching plan for better understanding the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. The booklet will then be utilized throughout the school and made available to other Denver/Boulder schools. Professor Rivera has established strong connections with both communities, near and far. For more information visit the Art and Art History department website.
Workshop for K-12 Colorado Educators in Hearing Loss Prevention
Associate Professor Kathryn Hoberg Arehart, Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: K-12 school teachers, nurses, audiologists and speech-language pathologists
This program works to educate school children about the importance of taking care of their hearing. Workshops for teachers and others who work with Colorado’s students include instruction in the science of sound, human hearing, hearing health, and dangerous decibels. The curriculum also includes interactive materials and activities that educators can use in their schools. This program is a direct extension of Professor Arehart’s teaching and research and she involves her students through the small-group component of the workshop. She has on-going communications with the participants and future plans for incorporating a web-based forum. For more information visit the Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences department website.
Year of Mathematics
Professor Eric Stade, Department of Mathematics
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: the students and teachers of east Boulder County’s Escuela Bilingüe Pioneer Elementary School
This project expands upon Professor Stade’s existing math course for future elementary school teachers by taking what his students are learning in class into the classrooms of Escuela Bilingüe Pioneer (a bilingual elementary school in east Boulder County). They will provide monthly professional development workshops for teachers, weekly after-school math workshops, resource support for the Talented and Gifted Program as well as tutoring. The project hopes to invigorate the mathematics program at Pioneer by providing requested support for both teachers and students. It also will strengthen the mathematics education of the CU students by providing them with significant experiential learning opportunities. For more information visit the Math department website.
ATLAS
Digital Currents Summer Camp
Associate Professor Diane Sieber and Research Associate Lucia Barker
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: middle and high school girls from the Metro area
This project hosts a three-week camp (Digital CUrrents) that brings minority girls to campus from Denver Public Schools Magnet Program. The camp has been funded for the past six years through a NSF grant. CU undergraduates are trained to be TAM instructors for the high school students, who in turn then teach the TAM (technology, arts and media) skills to middle school students. For more information visit the ATLAS website.
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
Amazing Space: Re-Imagining Literature Instruction in a Public High School
Associate Professor William McGinley
Award: $8,000 for 2nd of 2 years
Target Audience: students and teachers from Boulder’s Monarch High School
This project features a partnership designed to engage teachers, students, and CU-Boulder faculty in conversations about the nature of literature instruction. The partnership involves three different vehicles for establishing this dialog – a seminar series for teachers (that meets four hours each month) and forums (formal and informal) for teachers and students as well as a regular re-examination of specific day-to-day teaching practices among teachers, pre-service teachers, and students. For more information visit the School of Education outreach website.
Cultivating Creative and Performative Literacies in an Urban High School
Associate Professor William McGinley
Award: $8,000 for 2nd of 2 years
Target Audience: students and teachers from Metro Denver’s North High School
This project brings together the members of North High School’s drama department, students, CU-Boulder faculty, and pre-service teachers with adults from the local community to build on the inventive and performative language for young people to use that connects to self-reflectiveness and critical awareness. This effort involves two key components, poetry workshops with performances, as well as dramatic productions. For more information visit the School of Education outreach website.
COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE
Contributing to the Remediation of Abandoned Mines in the Coal Creek Watershed, Crested Butte, Colorado
Professor Joe Ryan, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering
Award: $8,000 for 2nd of 2 years
Target Audience: 1600 residents of Crested Butte, CO and the 375 residents of Jamestown, CO, the 14,000 Boulder County residents that drink Left Hand water and numerous community and government groups involved in both projects
CU-Boulder faculty and students assist in preparing a community-driven proposal for remediation of an abandoned mine in the Crested Butte watershed. They will carry out a detailed characterization of the effect of the mine on water quality through research and testing. Coal Creek flows through the center of town in Crested Butte and is a primary water source for the community. Jamestown project goals have included the submission of a successful proposal to the State of Colorado and U.S. EPA for funding assessment reclamation and stream-side remediation, characterization of the stream-side tailings to assist in remediation planning, and a detailed characterization of the effect on water quality during the initial stages of the remediation of the stream-side tailings. This overall effort has recently expanded to allow for requests from additional communities and further assistance to the community groups in Crested Butte and Jamestown. Professor Ryan will be able to incorporate the needs of other groups into his research and his students’ projects while aiding citizens throughout Colorado who face water quality issues. For more information visit the Engineering website.
Community of Soundscapes – Using Locative Media to Support Experiential Learning of the Sonic Environment in Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks (OSMP)
Professor Gerhard Fisher and Research Associate Elisa Giaccardi, Center for Lifelong Learning and Design, Department of Computer Science
Award: $4,650
Target Audience: new media researchers, digital artists, musicians, computer scientists, and community experts to support participants in local nature walks and workshop on campus (attendance estimated to be approximately 100 adults)
This project features collaboration with the City of Boulder to offer the community a unique way of experiencing OSMP through “sound cameras” that collect ambient sounds from the natural environment. The project will also host a community workshop on campus to introduce sound collection and interpretation. Ultimately the project hopes to encourage a focused and engaged way of listening to natural quiet and to sustain a reflective mechanism for expressing, sharing and learning from this experience. The project highlights Elisa Giaccardi’s research and involves CU-Boulder students in organization and planning. For more information visit the Computer Science website and the Silence of the Lands website.
Engineering, All Shook Up
Professor M.V. Sivaselvan, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering
Award: $1,700
Target Audience: 100 plus high school girls from schools along the Front Range
This project will build ten simulation building models to use in CU-Boulder’s Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) lab. The materials will be used for hands-on demonstrations with K-12 students during workshops in the labs to demonstrate the devastating effects of earthquakes. For more information visit the Earth Engineering Simulation lab website.
Socio-Technical Environments in Support of Learning, Participation, Collaboration, and Design: An Outreach Collaboration between the City of Boulder and the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design
Professor Gerhard Fischer, Professor Ernesto Arias, and Research Associate Hal Eden, Center for Lifelong Learning and Design, Department of Computer Science
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: City of Boulder planning professionals, citizen participants, and ultimately the entire Boulder community
This project involves collaboration with community partners, including the City of Boulder, to apply and study basic research and development in solving real problems with the Boulder community. Problems addressed by the collaboration include the human-centered transportation systems and transit-oriented development (Boulder’s future Transit Village), as well as emergency management, training, and preparedness. Contextualized and driven by these major real-world projects, the research will apply existing prototypes of our socio-technical design environments to real-world design activities in the public arenas and refine processes, software and hardware based on these activities. For more information visit the Computer Science research website.
Tissue Engineering in the Classroom
Assistant Professor Stephanie Bryant, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, in conjunction with the Biological Sciences Initiative (BSI)
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: 24 Front Range secondary school teachers and 1500 of their students
This project features collaboration between Professor Bryant and the BSI at CU-Boulder, highlighting the tissue engineering research done in Professor Bryant’s lab for a teacher workshop. Graduate students will follow-up the workshop with classroom visits and provide the teachers with activities that they can do in their own classrooms. BSI provides very high-quality programming and has very well-established connections within the K-12 community. For more information visit the Biological Sciences Initiative website.
University of Colorado Wildland Restoration Volunteers (WRV) Stream Resolution Monitoring Collaboration
Professor Diane McKnight and Professor Joe Ryan, Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: the 500 plus volunteers and staff of WRV as well as all the people who make use of the areas restored by WRV in northern Colorado
This project’s main goal is to provide a scientifically sound template that can be used to develop and implement monitoring plans for the stream and riparian restoration efforts undertaken by WRV. Professor McKnight’s Applied Stream Ecology class will develop a monitoring plan, and she will also conduct training for volunteers. Professor Ryan will form and guide a committee of experienced volunteers who will then conduct training on monitoring methods and equipment, a train the trainer’s model. For more information visit the Wildland Restoration Volunteers website.
Using Distance Education to Aid Developing Communities Worldwide
Professor Bernard Amadei, Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering with CAETE Director Mario Vidalon
Award: $8,000 for 2nd of 2 years
Target Audience: villagers in remote communities throughout Peru
This project integrates the expertise of Engineering for Developing Communities and the Center for Advanced Engineering and Technology Education (CAETE) with the Peruvian telecommunications regulatory agency, which has funded a little-used network of Internet cafes throughout Peru. Public education programs will be developed and delivered to remote communities using the existing network. Training on how to use the network, combined with the delivery of pertinent, everyday information designed to enhance the quality of life for the citizens of these communities, will help to establish the network as an integral part of these towns. For more information on both programs visit the Engineering for Developing Communities website.
GRADUATE SCHOOL
Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence Promoting Safe Schools
Professor Delbert Elliott
Award: $8,000 for the 2nd of 2 years
Target Audience: the 300 plus students at Boulder’s Whittier Elementary School
Whittier Elementary School has made a direct request to Professor Elliott for help addressing what administrators and students perceive to be a pervasive problem in the school – bullying. The Center will work with Whittier to determine effectiveness of their mediation program, assist with implementation and evaluation of their bullying prevention program, share results district-wide, and monitor their work within the district to expand into other areas of need. For more information on the center visit the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence website.
COLLEGE OF MUSIC
“America Onstage” Opera Outreach to Northwest Colorado Communities
Associate Professor William Gustafson
Award: $5,000
Target Audience: elementary and middle school students, senior citizens, and community members in northwestern Colorado towns
CU-Boulder opera students will perform various operas during a ten-day tour in Northwest Colorado. Central City Opera is a close partner to this project and contributes staff support and musical expertise. Each community will receive an educational packet 6 weeks before the visit. This is the project’s forth year. CU’s Contemporary Dance Works visited Northwestern Colorado this past spring and established some relationships that will enhance the impact of this particular project. For more information visit the College of Music website.
Presentation of African Music and Cultures Series to Communities and K-12 Audiences through Colorado
Professor Kwasi Ampene
Award: $5,000 per year for 1st of 2 years
Target Audience: general audiences in addition to small and large groups of K-12 students, their teachers and families in rural communities across Colorado
This program features the 30-member African Music Ensemble, comprised of CU-Boulder students from across campus, as they bring their performance to rural communities in Colorado. The group provides concert presentations of African music and dance at schools, churches, and other community centers. Programs in the schools also involve lecture/demonstrations, hands-on drumming workshops, and joint concerts for parents that feature CU students performing with local school children. For more information visit the College of Music website.
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