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CU alum Stephen Koehler enjoys high-flying career

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 18:14:40 +0000

CU alum Stephen Koehler enjoys high-flying career Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/09/2025 - 12:14

Bradley Worrell

The ROTC cadet and physics major turned naval aviator turned admiral was appointed commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in early 2024

��ƷSM��ӰƬ grad Stephen T. Koehler (Phys’86) has a really, really big job.

How big?

It covers an area encompassing 100 million square miles—roughly half the earth’s surface—from Antarctica to the Artic Circle and from the western U.S. coast to the Indian Ocean. The job includes oversight of about 200 ships, 1,500 aircraft and 150,000 military and civilian personnel.

��ƷSM��ӰƬ grad and U.S. Navy Admiral Stephen Koehler (Phys’86) was selected as the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in April 2024, following a succession of leadership positions in the Navy.

Admiral Koehler is the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, a position he assumed in April 2024 after a series of successive leadership positions during his 40-year career in the Navy. He became the 36th commander since Admiral Chester Nimitz assumed command on Dec. 31, 1941, at Pearl Harbor.

Koehler’s ascension to a top leadership post in the Navy is perhaps even more notable given that his initial goal was modest: He wanted to fly jets like his dad, who was a Navy fighter pilot.

“Honestly, I didn’t know I would stay in the Navy this long,” he says. “But from a very young age, I watched my dad go to work to fly airplanes and I just thought he was so cool, and I remember thinking, ‘I want to do what he does.’ My dad loved being a fighter pilot. So, I knew I wanted to fly jets and land them on ships.”

After being commissioned in 1986 through the Naval Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, Koehler became a naval aviator in 1989 and went on to fly more than 3,900 hours in the F-14 Tomcat and F-18 Hornet, with 600 carrier landings.

Koehler subsequently served in leadership positions that included commanding a fighter squadron, serving as the captain of a nuclear aircraft carrier, commander of a carrier strike group, commander of the U.S. Third Fleet and director for strategy, plans and policy for the Joint Staff in Washington, D.C., which was his last post.

Recently, Koehler spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine about how his time at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ helped him prepare for his career in the Navy, what it was like to be a naval aviator and what his job entails as commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. His responses have been lightly edited and condensed for space.

Question: Why did you decide to attend ��ƷSM��ӰƬ? And why did you choose to get your degree in physics?

Koehler: The main reason I ended up applying to ��ƷSM��ӰƬ was that the summer before my senior year in high school, I was taking a Greyhound bus around the country, rock climbing with my cousin. We stopped in Boulder for a week and we stayed with this guy who was a friend-of-a-friend type thing. We climbed nearly every day.

One day it rained bad enough we couldn’t climb, so we heard there was a campus in town and we decided maybe we should walk around it. I picked up an application at the UMC (University Memorial Center), where it stayed in my backpack for the rest of the summer. Later, I filled it out and sent it in, and then I got accepted.

I saw CU had a physics major and it had ROTC, so I said, ‘I’ll give it a go.’

Admiral Stephen Koehler (right) with his father, who was also a naval aviator, following the younger Koehler’s commissioning in 1986 during a ceremony held at Old Main on the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ campus.

I knew I wanted to be as competitive as I could going into Navy flight school. And initially, I thought I might want to be a test pilot—and I knew you had to have hard-science capability for that, so that’s why I majored in physics. I was not a natural physics guy, so it was a slog for me, but I did it to keep my options open.

Question: Do you feel like your time at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ helped prepare you for entering the Navy?

Koehler: Yes. Certainly, the ROTC piece provided an understanding of the Navy even beyond what I learned as a child of a Navy parent, and it taught me about leadership.

The physics background proved very beneficial, not only for flight school, but it led to me being selected to be a nuclear-trained officer. There is a technical degree that’s required to do that, and so, yes, my time at CU set me up for that.

Question: When people think of naval aviators, they likely think of the movie Top Gun. What is it like to be a naval aviator in real life?

Koehler: People who watch Top Gun think you are all tan and spend your days playing volleyball at the beach, or they watch Top Gun: Maverick and think you’re all tan and you play football on the beach (laughs). And arguably, I would love to do some of that, but being a carrier-based fighter pilot is about being steeped in professionalism.

Naval aviators train and train so that they make the extremely difficult look easy and routine when it’s not. It takes skill to land a plane on a pitching (ship) deck, day or night, and it takes dedication to be a fighter pilot, to make sure that you are better than the adversary. It’s about having a warrior mindset and making sure you are good at it, because you’ve got to be better than your opponent.

Question: What is your call sign and how did you get it?

Koehler: It’s Web. I won’t go into the whole boring story, but it’s short for Webster’s Dictionary. I received it during a very public display for a lack of spelling prowess (laughs). And I’m actually not a bad speller, but I was on that day.

I wish it (the call sign) was for something cool, like ‘spiderweb,’ or ‘he’s on the web.’ That’s probably half the reason it stuck—because it sounds cool even though it’s not (laughs). …

Now, even at this level, people call me by that name instead of my (given) name. I was sitting in the situation room in the White House in my last job and people would call me Web—not Steve or Admiral Koehler. They would be like, ‘Hey, Web, what do you think about this?’ So, that’s just what ends up happening.

Question: How does one go from being a naval aviator to a command where you are responsible for hundreds of ships and planes and tens of thousands of sailors?

Koehler: So, it’s a process. The first step of it is staying in the Navy and being promoted to the command of a squadron, which is 12 planes and about 250 people. You’re evaluated and then there’s normally two paths after that. You either go the nuclear power route, which means you learn to drive aircraft carriers, or you stay in the air wing and you’re in command of an air wing on a carrier.

The U.S. Pacific Fleet (a portion of which is pictured here) encompasses 100 million square miles from Antarctica to the Arctic circle and from the west coast of the United States into the Indian Ocean. The U.S. Pacific Fleet consists of approximately 200 ships, 1,500 aircraft and 150,000 military and civilian personnel. (Photo: U.S. Navy)

I was chosen to go the nuclear power route, so my physics degree proved useful. I went to nuclear power school and then I was the No. 2 guy on an aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson. I went on to command the USS Bataan, which is an amphibious assault ship, and then I was selected to be the captain of a nuclear aircraft carrier for two and a half years, which was the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Pending your performance and time in service, you may be selected to the rank of rear admiral (or flag rank). If you are not selected, there’s mandatory retirement at 30 years.

I was selected after my command of the aircraft carrier and have progressed through operational and staff command that yielded additional flag rank promotions. There was a decision by Naval leadership at some point to promote me to full admiral and select me to be the Pacific Fleet commander. So, it was a natural progression, and I’m very honored to be here.

Question: Can you share the scope of your duties as Pacific Fleet commander and the role the position plays in the world today?

Koehler: The scope and scale of the Pacific Fleet, of the area I’m responsible for as far as naval interests, is from the coast of California to the west coast of India, and Antarctica to the Arctic. It’s a huge area. …

The Pacific Fleet command is of vital importance to national security, resulting from the economic ties and the commerce that travels on the ocean, for which I am responsible on the Navy side to be ready to respond. There’s just a real importance to the job and there’s a lot of work to do out there. We must continue to improve our position and capability to maintain and ensure the freedom of the seas. The intent is a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific,’ with freedom of commerce, sovereign rights and the ability to sail and operate in accordance with international law, and those things the Pacific Fleet works continuously to provide.

Question: What is the best thing about being Pacific Fleet commander? And what is the most difficult thing?

Koehler: The best thing is having the opportunity to lead all of these sailors. With sailors and civilians, there is on the order of 150,000 of them working toward a common goal, which is to achieve our national objectives. The opportunity to go out and see them and lead them is the best. That also delves into the challenge, which is that it’s a large scale and scope of operations that I oversee. The challenge is to be able to get out and see them as much as I would like and revel in the success they have. They are a pretty amazing group of people who do some outstanding work.

Admiral Stephen Koehler salutes during a 2024 ceremony at Pearl Harbor. (Photo: U.S. Navy)

Question: Do you still get to fly jets?

Koehler: I wish I did. I did get to fly as an admiral when I was the carrier strike group commander and we were on deployment in 2017. I got my last carrier landing in April of 2018.

Flying is a young person’s game. Not that I wouldn’t continue to go flying … but there’s no time to maintain my currency and while it would be fun for me, I’m not sure it would be the best use of my time now.

Question: With your four decades of service in the Navy, are there a few standout moments in your career?

Koehler: That’s a really hard one. First of all, it’s been 40 years, but it doesn’t seem like it. I got to Colorado (as a freshman) in 1982, and it feels like I was just there. …

There are all sorts of things I remember. Taking command of an aircraft carrier, with 3,000 people assigned to it, and with the air wing it’s 5,000 people. That was the first huge command for me, and you have all of these sailors that you get the privilege to lead.

Certainly, the news that I was going to be Pacific Fleet commander was memorable. That was something I would never expect. It’s the honor of a lifetime to do that, and to follow in the footsteps of some amazing people, starting with Admiral Nimitz in World War II.

Another standout thing was being the demonstration pilot for the F-14 at air shows and having the opportunity to fly in front of my family at the Miramar Air Show in 1996. It was an amazing day to fly for my dad that day.

Looking back, there are many memories, and it’s been nothing but a really fun, challenging, rewarding experience. I have been able to enjoy it with my wife, Gina, who’s been with me since college, where we met in 1983 in Boulder in the Baker Hall dorm. She’s been with me the whole time, which has just been amazing.

Question: Anything else you would like to add?

Koehler: Go Buffs!

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The ROTC cadet and physics major turned naval aviator turned admiral was appointed commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in early 2024.

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Top image: Admiral Stephen Koehler (green flight suit) was designated a naval aviator in 1989 and flew more than 3,900 hours in the F-14 Tomcat and F-18 Hornet, with 600 carrier landings.

Art and transformation are inherently connected, prof says

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 16:02:54 +0000

Art and transformation are inherently connected, prof says Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/08/2025 - 10:02

Bradley Worrell

For artist and professor of printmaking Melanie Yazzie, making art is about much more than creating something aesthetically pleasing

For Melanie Yazzie, professor of art practices and head of printmaking in the Department of Art and Art History at the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, art and transformation are intrinsically connected.

That’s because she describes her art as being much more than just about creating aesthetically pleasing work—it’s a medium for sharing social, cultural and political experiences shaping the lives of native peoples in the United States and beyond. Her artwork—which takes the form of paintings, printmaking, sculptures and ceramics—is shaped by her personal experiences, as well as events and symbols from her Diné (Navajo) culture.

For Melanie Yazzie, a ��ƷSM��ӰƬ professor of art practices and head of printmaking in the Art and Art History, art and transformation are intrinsically connected.

“I think when you’re really digging deep inside yourself and you make a work about something that’s really important, maybe it’s a certain theme you are trying to get across, when someone else sees it and gets it and is affected by it, that’s when you really see the power in artmaking,” she says. “It can transform you as the maker and also the person who sees it.”

Yazzie says her artwork follows the Diné dictum “walk in beauty”—the idea of creating beauty and harmony. “There’s always positive and negative in the world, a sort of yin and yang. In Navajo culture, walking in beauty is really about walking a balanced path and trying to stay in a positive frame of mind,” she explains.

That doesn’t mean avoiding controversial subjects in her art, but she says it does color the approach she takes.

“When I was younger and in grad school, I made artwork that was very much in your face,” Yazzie says. “And in a sense, I was preaching to the choir. People who understood what I was saying would stay and listen, but what I realized with that work was that the people I wanted to reach dismissed (my work) as just, ‘she’s an angry woman or she’s an angry person of color.’”

Today, much of her work straddles the line between abstractionism and representationalism, with recurring motifs of abstracted animal and plant forms, as well as people—notably women—who are rendered in a spectrum of colors. Yazzie says casual gallery viewers have described some of her paintings and prints with words such as “beautiful” and “whimsical” and even “silly.”

For those willing to inquire, however, there are deeper meanings to many of her works, which can tackle such serious issues as the horrible treatment of Native Americans in boarding schools run by the U.S. government from the 1880s to 1920s or the unsolved murders of indigenous women today.

“In a sense, it’s like using honey to draw people in and then educating them,” Yazzie says of her artwork today. “It’s a much slower path, but I’ve seen it over the years making bigger strides than when I was shouting ‘injustice.’”

Particularly with her earlier works, but even in some cases today, Yazzie says some people who “very rigid” in their views don’t appreciate her art. While it’s not always easy to hear, she credits her upbringing on the Navajo nation in northeastern Arizona with keeping her grounded and confident.

“Since a very young age I was brought up among Navajo people and around really strong women role models. That was my foundation,” she says. “So, when people were sometimes rude or racist, I would think back to my grandmother, who only spoke Navajo, and she would explain (their outlook) to me by saying people will sometimes act like bad children, and they don’t understand how to behave, so you have to show more patience with them and have a kind heart.”

Sharing personal experiences

Artwork has allowed Yazzie to tap into and share deeply personal experiences, such as a series of paintings she did after she was first diagnosed with Type II diabetes and was for a time at risk of losing her eyesight. Those paintings were notable for featuring small numbers in “thought bubbles” in the background of various works, capturing her blood sugar highs and lows on a given day.

Yazzie says gallery patrons who are diabetic oftentimes picked up on the hidden numbers. She has enjoyed talking with them about why her numbers were particularly high or very low in certain paintings.

“I think when you’re really digging deep inside yourself and you make a work about something that’s really important, maybe it’s a certain theme you are trying to get across, when someone else sees it and gets it and is affected by it, that’s when you really see the power in artmaking,” says Melanie Yazzie (with her sculpture "Strength from Within"). (Photo: Melanie Yazzie)

“That type of conversation is something that you can only have with someone who understands that illness. And it was beautiful, because for the people who saw the work who were diabetic, it was like a secret language between us,” she says.

She adds, “People sometimes make diabetes like it’s something shameful, but when we talked about it in a public setting, they (patrons) felt embraced and included. That artwork is about creating a space of healing and acceptance.”

And while she is proud of her Navajo cultural heritage, Yazzie says she takes pleasure in the fact that she makes art that people would not normally expect from an indigenous artist.

“I think there are stereotypes of what people—even in my own Navajo community—would classify as being Native American artwork, and I think a lot of times I go against that,” she says, noting she generally eschews paintings of pottery work, tepees or male warriors on horses. “And I think that’s one of the things that makes my work really strong is that it’s unique and different and not fulfilling stereotypes about Native American artwork.”

Through the years, Yazzie’s art has been featured in more than 500 group and solo exhibitions around the world. Her work can always be found at the Glenn Green Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Just as being an artist can bring transforming knowledge to others, Yazzie says artists need to be open to transformation in their own work and how it is presented. She learned that lesson for herself recently, when people who follow her work asked if she could make her art more accessible, which led her to a new direction as an artist.

“I’ve started doing jewelry pieces and scarves. That idea came from collectors and others who were saying, ‘I have one of your paintings or prints and I wish I could carry it with me when I’m going to see the doctor or because I’m having a hard time now,” she says. “In the Navajo tradition, jewelry is worn for protection and to bring about good things. So, this came about from people who say my work brings them hope.”

Balancing the best of both worlds

Yazzie says she’s been creating art for as long as she can remember. Still, her career path wasn’t always set in stone. Her parents, who were both educators, encouraged her in her formative years to follow their path, as they had some concerns about whether being an artist was a viable career.

“In any community, it’s really a struggle to make a living as an artist, and so I think they were just worried about that,” she says. For a time, she seriously contemplated becoming an English or Spanish teacher, but eventually decided to pursue a career in the arts, a decision she says her parents ultimately came to appreciate.

“My father would always tell me, choose something that you are really passionate about and that you love. And many people say that: that if you do something you love it never really feels like work. That was my experience. I just found that artmaking and being in the artist community really fed me in ways that other things didn’t.”

Today, as a professor at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, Yazzie says she is able to combine the best of both worlds as an artist and an instructor.

“Being a professor and helping students share their stories and experiences is deeply rewarding,” she says. “I think it’s wonderful to be able to help create a strong human being who is speaking their truth through their artwork.”

Even for ��ƷSM��ӰƬ students who have no interest in pursuing a career in the arts, Yazzie strongly encourages them to take classes that engage their creative side.

“My advice would be: Take an art class, a writing course, a music class, or anything in the creative realm,” she says. “It opens up parts of you that help you see the world in a more well-rounded way, and I think that is the power of a liberal arts education.”

"Remembering Brittany"

"Growing Stronger"

"She's Singing"

"Simon Joe Benally is Looking for a Rich Girlfriend"

"Speak Truth"

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For artist and professor of printmaking Melanie Yazzie, making art is about much more than creating something aesthetically pleasing.

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Tales as old as time … yet we still love them

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 15:36:10 +0000

Tales as old as time … yet we still love them Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/04/2025 - 09:36

Rachel Sauer

With yet another Snow White adaptation currently in theaters, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ scholar Suzanne Magnanini reflects on the enduring appeal of fairy tales

Once upon a time—this time, in fact, and many of the ones that came before it—there was a story that never grew dull in its telling.

It possibly leaped the porous cultural and national borders of narrative, carried by caravans or ships or ethernet cables and planted in the ready imaginations of successive generations of story lovers—those who tell them and those who hear them.

Maybe it’s the story of a young person who ventures into the unknown, where they encounter magic and beasts of all sizes and a resolution specific to the tale’s time and place. Maybe there really even are fairies involved.

Suzanne Magnanini, a ��ƷSM��ӰƬ associate professor of Italian and chair of the Department of French and Italian, notes that fairy tales' malleability helps them remain fresh and relevant over centuries of retellings.

And we never seem to tire of hearing about them.

The recent theatrical release of Disney’s live-action Snow White—one of countless retellings of the tale over more than 400 years—highlights the place of honor that fairy tales occupy in cultures around the world and in the hearts of people hearing them for the first time or the thousandth.

One of the reasons they remain fresh through countless years and iterations is their malleability, says Suzanne Magnanini, a ��ƷSM��ӰƬ associate professor of Italian and chair of the Department of French and Italian. “The Italian author Italo Calvino, who also edited a seminal collection of Italian folktales, writes of fairy tales as being like a stone fruit, where you have that hard core center that is always the same—you’ll usually recognize a Sleeping Beauty story, for example—but the fruit can be radically different around that.”

Stories of time and place

As a researcher, Magnanini has published broadly on fairy tales, including her 2008 book Fairy-Tale Science: Monstrous Generation in the Fairy Tales of Straparola and Basile. She began studying fairy tales while working on her PhD, finding in them a fascinating dovetailing between her interests in monstrosity and otherness.

“As a scholar, I take what’s called a social-historical approach,” she explains. “I’m really interested in all those little details that link a tale to a very precise place in time where it was told, and I’ve written about the ways in which fairy tales are used to elaborate on and think about scientific theories of reproduction that hadn’t really been nailed down at the time—questions that were still being circulated about whether humans could interbreed with animals, for example, and would that produce a monstrous child?

“You look at a some variations of Beauty and the Beast, like Giovan Francesco Straparola’s story of a pig king, where it’s a magical version of these questions, and maybe what’s actually happening is that fairy tales are a way to think through the anxieties and interests of the time.”

Fairy Tales at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ

The ATU Index is one of the search elements that Suzanne Magnanini and her students are including as they develop the database for Fairy Tales at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ. The project aims, in part, to improve access and searchability of the more than 2,000 fairy tale collections that are part of the Rare Books Collection at Norlin Library.

The project is a partnership between undergraduates and graduate students under the direction of Magnanini and Sean Babbs, instruction coordinator for the University Libraries' Rare and Distinctive Collections, as well as Hope Saska, CU Art Museum acting director and chief curator, who has trained students in visual-thinking strategies. The project is supported by Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, the ASSETT Innovation Incubator, the President’s Teaching Scholars Program and the University Libraries.

Fairy Tales at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ will host a showcase of CU's fairy tale collection from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m. April 16 in Norlin Library M350B. Learn more here.

Though fairy tales may be spun in response to what’s happening in a specific time and place, they also often address concerns that aren’t specific to one location or culture but are broadly pondered across humanity. “Andrew Teverson has written that fairy tales are literature’s migrants because they can move across borders, they can move across boundaries and then make themselves at home and assimilate to a certain extent in different cultures,” Magnanini says.

For example, the Brothers Grimm heard a tale called “Sneewittchen” (Snow White) from folklorist Marie Hassenpflug, as well as from other sources, and included it as tale No. 53 in their seminal 1812 Grimm’s Fairy Tales. However, says Magnanini, there was a similar tale called “The Young Slave” in Giambattista Basile’s 1634 work Pentamerone. In fact, Snow White is type 709 in the Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index (ATU Index), which catalogs and describes common motifs and themes in fairy tales and folklore around the world.

Not so happily ever after

The origins of many fairy tales can be traced as far back as ancient Greece, Rome and China, Magnanini says, which speaks to their ability not only to help people of particular times and places explore their anxieties and questions, but to address the feelings that have been central to the human condition almost since our species emerged from caves.

“When I think about fairy tales, I think about number of characteristics that make them really appealing across time and space,” Magnanini says. “If you think about it, the protagonists are almost always young people heading out into the world—much like our students are heading out—leaving home behind, having to make their way in world, facing challenges. That experience can be very transformational, so in a way these stories are all about metamorphosis and change.

“A lot of times that’s when you’re living your life in Technicolor and all the emotions are new. So, even if you’re no longer in that moment of life, fairy tales tap into experiences like the first falling in love, the first adventure from home. And they often end right after the wedding, so you don’t see someone having to do their taxes or being like, ‘Oh, my god, I’ve been in this relationship for 30 years and I’m bored.’ I think part of the reason we don’t get tired of fairy tales is because they capture this fleeting time in life.”

“If you think about it, the (fairy tale) protagonists are almost always young people heading out into the world—much like our students are heading out—leaving home behind, having to make their way in world, facing challenges," says ��ƷSM��ӰƬ scholar Suzanne Magnanini. (Photo: Disney Studios)

While fairy tales, particularly as they’ve been interpreted and simplified by Disney, are stereotyped as having “and they lived happily ever after” endings, fairy tales pre-Disney more commonly ended with justice served, Magnanini says. For example, the version of “Snow White” in the 1812 Grimm’s Fairy Tales ends with the evil queen being forced to step into a pair of red-hot iron shoes and dance until she dies.

“A lot of people will say, ‘Oh, it’s the happy ending that’s the appeal of fairy tales,’ but it’s important to remember the vast majority of fairy tales end with the deliverance of justice—something really unjust has happened, someone has been discriminated against, there’s some evil in the world, and justice is delivered,” Magnanini explains. “People who study the formal aspects of fairy tales always talk about how the ‘happy ending’ is found in justice.

“Disney Studios has a tendency to remove the ambiguity from these tales and remove most of the violence—simplifying them in a lot of ways. If you read the French version of Beauty and the Beast, Charles Perrault’s version, there were other siblings in there; there was a complex family structure with complex interactions and a lot of really heavy issues—the family must deal with economic disaster.”

In fact, the field of fairy tale scholarship addresses everything from feminist interpretations of the stories to the ways in which children use fairy tales to help navigate psychosexual rites of passage. Generations of authors have told and continue to retell these familiar stories through different lenses of gender, sexuality, geography, racial identity, economic status and many, many others.

“What makes these stories different, and what I think is a big part of the appeal of fairy tales, is the magic or the marvel,” Magnanini says. “For it to be a fairy tale, scholars would say there has to be magic in there—not just the presence of magic, but magic that facilitates the happy ending by allowing the protagonist to overcome whatever obstacles are in the way of what they desire, maybe the marriage, the wealth, the happy ending. There’s something so satisfying about that, because it doesn’t happen in your quotidian day-to-day life. I mean, imagine if you met a talking deer.”

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With yet another Snow White adaptation currently in theaters, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ scholar Suzanne Magnanini reflects on the enduring appeal of fairy tales.

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Top image: Disney Studios

Picturing climate change in the West

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 20:57:22 +0000

Picturing climate change in the West Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/02/2025 - 14:57

Rachel Sauer

What began as a hobby for ��ƷSM��ӰƬ economics undergrad Lucas Gauthier came together as a photographic portfolio documenting the already-evident and potential effects of climate change

Lucas Gauthier and his family moved to Colorado when he was in 6th grade, and after a decade of fairly frequent moves—both parents were in the military—this is where everything made sense: mountains for climbing, runs for skiing, trails for hiking and rivers for rafting.

They took some convincing, but eventually his parents let him venture out on his own—forays that grew longer and longer and took him farther and farther into the Colorado wilderness.

Lucas Gauthier, a senior majoring in economics, has photographically documented his adventures in western landscapes since he was in high school.

About four or five years ago, he began taking pictures along the way, usually on his phone. The photography wasn’t the point, necessarily, “but I found that, especially in Colorado, hiking puts you in some very beautiful places,” he explains. “I hike, and the pictures happen while I’m hiking.”

A through line for what had become a large portfolio of photographs emerged in spring 2024. Gauthier, a senior majoring in economics with a focus on natural resource management, was taking ENLP 3100—Complex Leadership Challenges, a class that requires students to complete three projects during the semester.

The first two projects were more technically focused, but the third emphasized creating something of personal value. So, Gauthier thought about all the places in Colorado that he loves, scrolling through both his memories and his photos. He realized that what began as an almost offhanded hobby was actually documenting places that would be or already were altered by climate change.

From that realization was born Climate Change in the West: A Photographic Journal, a multimedia project that incorporates not only data about things like wildfire, heat wave and drought risk and their potential for significant economic impact, but makes it personal with the scenes of incomparable beauty he has witnessed and documented.

“My interest in water specifically came from my interest in hiking and skiing and an interest in all outdoor sports,” Gauthier says. “When people say there’s going to be less rain, less precipitation, that’s a big deal for me.

“I worked and lived in Breckenridge, which is a tourism-dependent area, so if there’s not enough water, that’s weeks of ski season that are lost, and there might not be a rafting season, so that’s where you start to see the overlaps between how climate change is affecting natural systems and the actual economic impacts on livelihoods.”

Capturing what he sees

“My interest in photography has been in capturing this broad swath of environments that we get to play in—as a way to memorialize the experience for myself, and also to share it with others,” Gauthier says.

He took two photography classes in high school, neither of which focused on outdoor or landscape photography, “but I do think those gave me a good idea for how to compose photos and set them up, how to look for different lighting and visual elements,” he says. “They got me in the mindset of thinking, ‘This is something that strikes me, and I’ll see if I can frame it in way that works with what I want to capture.’”

Gauthier was also in high school when he began tackling ever-more-ambitious climbs and started working his way through Colorado’s 58 fourteeners, a goal he completed over the summer. Of those 58, he climbed at least 45 solo.

“(Climbing solo) is kind of a mix of preference and necessity,” Gauthier explains. “It’s easier when the only person you have to plan for logistically is yourself. And when you’re trying to beat lighting and thunder, it’s best to move light and fast.”

However, he never moves so fast that he can’t look around and, if he’s able, to capture what he’s seeing in a photograph. And he returns to certain favorite places, enough that he can compare them season by season or year by year.

“We’ve had a mix of good and bad snow years, but it’s been very noticeable when a particular area that usually has good (snow) coverage into May or June has already melted,” he says. “And there have been times when I’ve hiked through area and a few years later it’s a burn scar, which is a very visceral sense of change in the environment.

“Then there are little things like aspens are yellowing at a different date, wildflowers are blooming and stop blooming at different times. While it’s not as black and white a change, moving those transition points is definitely something that adds up in aggregate.”

Factors of climate change

Now, as he works his way through Colorado’s 100 highest peaks—he’s summited more than 80—and completes his bachelor’s degree, he still is conceptualizing what it all means. Many climate change models are forecast to take decades—if not centuries—to happen, but Gauthier is already seeing anecdotal evidence of them. What does that mean for how he exists in the outdoors and what he’s going to do after he graduates?

“I feel like there is a lot of doom and gloom, and I definitely feel that, but at the same time I am very much a person who feels like I have to say what I’m going to do about it,” he says. “With my area of emphasis in environmental economics, it’s about acknowledging that we have these issues and asking how we address them through actual, tangible means. For me, that means engaging in actual political and broader social processes. When I’m engaged in something, I feel less powerless.

“I think the main point that I wanted to communicate with this project was emphasizing how each of these different factors of climate change are integrated,” he says. “Fires affect water quality, flooding affects agriculture and all of it impacts places that I and a lot of other people love.”

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What began as a hobby for ��ƷSM��ӰƬ economics undergrad Lucas Gauthier came together as a photographic portfolio documenting the already-evident and potential effects of climate change.

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CU prof fighting to keep Latin classes alive through video storytelling

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 15:51:17 +0000

CU prof fighting to keep Latin classes alive through video storytelling Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/01/2025 - 09:51

Cody DeBos

For Reina Callier, learning Latin ‘is like lifting weights for your brain’

When a student in one of Reina Callier’s Latin classes said, “I came for the language, I stayed for the vibes,” she laughed, but the phrase stuck with her.

It captured something essential about Latin classrooms. Beyond conjugations and declensions, they offer students a haven for community, curiosity and a shared passion for the ancient world.

In recent years, though, that community has been shrinking.

Reina Callier, a ��ƷSM��ӰƬ teaching assistant professor of classics, notes that “Latin survives because people love it. And as long as we keep sharing that love, it’s not going anywhere.”

“Enrollment in Latin classes, especially at the secondary level, has largely been declining,” Callier explains. “During COVID, Latin classes were seen as non-essential, so they lost a lot of students. And they’ve been having a hard time bringing the numbers back up.”

For Callier, a teaching assistant professor of classics and the Latin Program Coordinator at the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, this trend is more than an academic concern.

She wasn’t alone in her worries. In response to falling enrollment rates, the Colorado Classics Association (CCA) formed a committee dedicated to promoting interest in Latin classes.

The solution? A project that would convey the benefits of learning Latin to students in their own words.

A language in decline

Across the country, Latin programs have struggled to justify their existence in an education system increasingly focused on STEM fields and workforce development. In some districts, administrators have proposed cutting Latin entirely, forcing teachers and students to fight for their programs.

In collaboration with the CCA and local high school educators, Callier helped spearhead You Belong in Latin, a video project designed to remind high school students why Latin is worth learning.

“We finally came up with the idea for a video, because it’s something you can share easily. It’s more entertaining than just looking at a brochure that says, ‘Here’s why Latin is a good thing to take,’” Callier says.

The project quickly took shape as teachers across Colorado filmed interviews with their students, capturing firsthand accounts of what Latin means to them. They also collected footage of classrooms filled with laughter, animated discussions and moments of discovery.

“One of the things we noticed is that once students get into Latin class, they really love it,” Callier says. “You just have to get them in the door.”

The team secured a grant to bring the project to life, which allowed them to hire a former ��ƷSM��ӰƬ student who majored in film—and took several semesters of Latin with Callier—to professionally edit the videos.

Over the course of a year, the raw footage was transformed into a compelling series of short videos, each emphasizing a unique aspect of the Latin classroom experience.

Now available on YouTube, the You Belong in Latin videos are a vital resource for teachers, students and parents to share.

Latin is for everyone

A central theme of You Belong in Latin is the tight-knit community formed in Latin classrooms. Unlike more popular language programs, Latin classes tend to be small, allowing students to form deeper relationships with their peers and instructors.

“At ��ƷSM��ӰƬ, if you take Latin, aside from the first semester where there are two sections of Latin I, after that, everybody’s in the same class together,” Callier explains. “You continue to see the same instructors in the department as well. So you get to know them, and you get to know your peers in a way that’s not really very common at the college level.”

The same holds true in high schools, where Latin students often stay in one cohort across multiple years and gain a sense of unity and belonging.

The videos also seek to challenge the misconception that Latin is elitist—a subject reserved for Ivy League prep schools and aspiring academics.

“Latin actually isn’t elitist. Everybody’s starting from the same level when they walk into Latin class. There’s no barrier, and everybody can benefit from it in various ways,” Callier says.

And while Latin’s reputation as a “dead language” often turns students away, Callier argues that its benefits are very much alive. Latin gives students a foundation for English vocabulary, enhances their analytical skills and prepares them for careers in law, medicine and the sciences, she says, adding that it also provides direct access to Latin texts, “which is immensely beneficial to anyone who is enthusiastic about Roman literature or history.

“Latin actually isn’t elitist. Everybody’s starting from the same level when they walk into Latin class. There’s no barrier, and everybody can benefit from it in various ways.”

“Learning Latin is like weightlifting for your brain,” she says with a smile.

Keeping the momentum going

Now that the You Belong in Latin videos have been published, Callier is working to spread the word.

“We have been sharing our Colorado Classics Association YouTube channel with educators from around the country who are looking for different ways to promote Latin,” she says.

Feedback on the project has been encouraging for Latin educators who rarely receive recognition for their efforts.

“What we are doing as Latin educators is something that is really having an impact,” Callier says. “Students are getting a lot out of Latin in various ways, and they’re really appreciating what we bring to the table.”

At its heart, this project isn’t just about keeping Latin alive but also celebrating what makes it special. As Callier and her colleagues know, the language is only the beginning. The real magic comes from the people who learn and teach it.

Callier says, “Latin survives because people love it. And as long as we keep sharing that love, it’s not going anywhere.”

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For Reina Callier, learning Latin ‘is like lifting weights for your brain.'

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Two ��ƷSM��ӰƬ scientists win prestigious honor

Clint Talbott — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 14:00:00 +0000

Two ��ƷSM��ӰƬ scientists win prestigious honor Clint Talbott Thu, 03/27/2025 - 08:00

Ivan Smalyukh and Tom Blumenthal are named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Two ��ƷSM��ӰƬ professors have been named 2024 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the group announced today.

Ivan Smalyukh (left) and Tom Blumenthal

Ivan Smalyukh, professor of physics, and Thomas Blumenthal, professor emeritus of molecular, cellular and developmental biology (MCDB), are among the 471 scientists, engineers and innovators who have been recognized for scientifically and socially distinguished achievements by the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the Science family of journals.

This year’s class of fellows “is the embodiment of scientific excellence and service to our communities,” said Sudip S. Parikh, AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals.

“At a time when the future of the scientific enterprise in the U.S. and around the world is uncertain, their work demonstrates the value of sustained investment in science and engineering.”

“I am pleased to see this well-deserved recognition of Professor Smalyukh and Professor Blumenthal. Their accomplishments highlight the remarkable scientific advances occurring at CU,” said Irene Blair, dean of natural sciences.

Smalyukh’s research encompasses different branches of soft-condensed-matter and optical physics, including chiral phenomena, knot theory, laser trapping and imaging techniques, molecular and colloidal self-assembly, fundamental properties of liquid crystals, polymers, organic and nano photovoltaics, nano-structured and other functional materials, as well as their photonic and electro-optic applications.

“We aspire to uncover very fundamental physical principles underpinning phenomena and properties of materials and other physical systems,” Smalyukh noted. “At the same time, we also apply this fundamental knowledge to contribute to a sustainable future via designing artificial forms of meta matter needed to reduce the growing energy demand and slow down climate change.”

Smalyukh earned BS and MS degrees with highest honors in 1994 and 1995 from Lviv Polytechnic National University in Ukraine. He earned a PhD in chemical physics in 2003 from Kent State University in Ohio.

He joined the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ faculty in 2007. In addition to serving as a professor of physics, he holds a courtesy appointment as a professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, is a fellow in the Materials Science Engineering Program and is a fellow of the Renewable & Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), a joint institute of NREL and ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.

Among other awards, Smalyukh has been named a fellow of the American Physical Society and has won the Department of Energy Early Career Research Award and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

Smalyukh said he is honored by the selection: “I am especially grateful to many students and postdocs doing interdisciplinary physics-centered research together with me over nearly 20 years at ��ƷSM��ӰƬ.”

Blumenthal’s lab has studied a variety of important problems in molecular biology, including regulation of gene expression, mechanisms of RNA splicing and arrangement of genes on chromosomes. His lab is responsible for discovering that eukaryotes can have operons for identifying the protein that is responsible for recognizing the 3’ splice site and for a variety of other esoteric findings.

He has also studied how the tiny extra chromosome responsible for Down syndrome changes the levels of many proteins, even though most of those proteins are not encoded on the extra chromosome.

Blumenthal earned a BA in biology from Antioch College in 1966 and a PhD in genetics from Johns Hopkins University in 1970. He did postdoctoral research at Harvard University from 1970-73, then spent 23 years at the Biology Department at Indiana University Bloomington and nine years at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He joined ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s faculty in 2006 and served as professor and chair of MCDB.

Among other awards, Blumenthal was recognized as a fellow by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010 and won a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 1980.

Lee Niswander, professor and chair of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, said the department is thrilled about Blumenthal’s recognition. “Tom’s research program related to RNA processing and gene regulation, as well as his strong leadership of MCDB, have left an enduring mark on science and MCDB.

“Tom continues to engage with astute questions and the endowment of a lecture series related to RNA biology through a partnership between ��ƷSM��ӰƬ and CU Anschutz.”

Counting Blumenthal and Smalyukh, 81 ��ƷSM��ӰƬ professors have been named AAAS fellows since 1981.

Ivan Smalyukh and Tom Blumenthal are named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Who has the influence to curb gender bias in STEM?

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 13:30:00 +0000

Who has the influence to curb gender bias in STEM? Rachel Sauer Tue, 03/25/2025 - 07:30

Cody DeBos

Hint: It’s not women

When Charlotte Moser started graduate school, she was the only woman in a shared office with four male students. One day, a classmate casually remarked that he wished she weren’t there so the office could be all men.

Moser barely had time to process the sting of the exclusion before another male student cut in, calling out the remark as gender bias.

“It felt so great to have someone stand up for me,” Moser recalls. “I felt like someone had my back and I belonged in this space.”

Charlotte Moser, a research associate in ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, studies how allyship in male-dominated fields influences workplace culture.

That moment stayed with her—not just because of the personal validation, but because it led her to begin exploring a larger pattern in workplace dynamics.

Now as a research associate in the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Moser studies how allyship in male-dominated fields influences workplace culture. Her findings reveal an unsettling but potentially useful truth: When men openly advocate for gender equality, their voices often carry more weight than women’s do.

The reason? Not necessarily gender, Moser says, but power and influence.

The social influence gap

Moser’s research suggests that in STEM workplaces, where men hold most leadership positions, male allies are perceived as more persuasive, more legitimate and more effective at creating a culture that supports gender equality than their female counterparts.

“We find that men who advocate for gender equality and act as allies tend to be better at signaling to women that they will belong and be respected in male-dominated STEM contexts than when women advocate for gender equality,” Moser says.

Her findings suggest that allyship in male-dominated workplaces isn’t just about intent or even gender. Rather, it’s about who is perceived as having the power to create change.

If a female scientist points out that women are often overlooked for leadership roles or promotions, she may be met with skepticism or dismissed as self-interested. But when a male colleague makes the same argument, research shows that their remark is more likely to be taken seriously and perceived as a norm-setting statement rather than a personal complaint.

“Other work has found that men tend to be perceived more positively than women when advocating for gender equality,” Moser explains. “Women tend to be viewed as whiners, complainers, and only acting in their own self-interest.”

The cost of exclusion

Gender bias in the workplace isn’t a theoretical issue. It has real repercussions.

Car-crash dummies designed to represent women’s bodies weren’t introduced until 2011. Even today, they are tested only in the passenger seat, not the driver’s seat. (Photo: Lin Pan/Wikimedia Commons)

“A huge consequence is the loss of the contributions from many brilliant women scientists,” Moser says.

Research shows that women are less likely to be retained in male-dominated fields due to factors like persistent bias, exclusion and a lack of support. With fewer women present to offer their perspective, blind spots emerge, and those gaps can have serious, even deadly, implications.

One striking example is the case of crash-test dummies.

“For decades, car-crash dummies were built to represent the average body of a man,” Moser says. “This led women to be much more likely to fall victim to serious injury and death in car crashes.”

Shockingly, car-crash dummies designed to represent women’s bodies weren’t introduced until 2011. Even today, they are tested only in the passenger seat, not the driver’s seat. Recent statistics show that women are 17% more likely to be killed in a car accident and 73% more likely to be seriously injured than male occupants.

This oversight isn’t an accident, but the denouement of decades of scientific decision-making that lacked diverse perspectives.

“More inclusive science is better for everyone—not just those who face bias,” Moser says.

Going beyond performative allyship

If allyship from men is perceived as more effective, what should they do to ensure their support is genuine and impactful?

Moser has a few recommendations.

“I would say that men who don’t know where to start could start within their own spheres. Pay attention to what’s going on, how people are treated, and listen to the women around you,” she says.

But listening is only the first step.

Moser emphasizes that standing up against gender bias isn’t just about making statements on social media or in private. Meaningful allyship requires action.

Calling out dismissive remarks in a team meeting or challenging biased hiring decisions can have an immediate effect. Those in leadership positions can stretch their influence further by advocating for equitable organizational policies and ensuring women have access to mentorship and career-advancement opportunities.

“One hurdle for men regarding allyship for gender equality is that they feel that it is ‘not their place,’” Moser says. “I hope that my work can show that allyship from men is not only wanted but very beneficial to women.”

However, Moser warns that inauthentic allyship—publicly claiming to support gender equality without backing it up—can make meaningful change even harder to achieve.

“The future of allyship isn’t just about who speaks. It’s about who gets listened to.”

“I have other work showing that it is worse to claim allyship but then do nothing to promote equality than if one had said nothing about inequality and allyship in the first place,” she says.

Who deserves to be heard?

Moser’s research makes clear the fact that eliminating gender bias in the workplace isn’t a matter of men versus women. Rather, it’s about recognizing and altering the systems that create credibility and influence.

“I think allyship can change the narrative of the widespread belief that most men don’t care about women and change the narrative that it’s women’s responsibility to make these workplaces work for them,” she says.

But the goal isn’t just getting men to use their influence—it’s about redistributing power so that women’s voices carry the same weight without needing male validation.

“The future of allyship isn’t just about who speaks,” Moser explains. “It’s about who gets listened to.”

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Hint: It’s not women.

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Discovering Boulder County’s tiniest residents

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 17:10:47 +0000

Discovering Boulder County’s tiniest residents Rachel Sauer Mon, 03/24/2025 - 11:10

Collette Mace

��ƷSM��ӰƬ alum and experienced caver Dave Steinmann recently discovered a new species of pseudoscorpion in Mallory Cave, with a moniker honoring its namesake hometown

When Dave Steinmann (Phys’90) first started classes at the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ in 1984, he had never explored a cave before and never really thought much about caves. However, when his new dorm-mate suggested they try his dad’s favorite hobby of caving, what seemed at first like an adventurous new pastime soon turned into a lifestyle for Steinmann—one that he has continued for more than 30 years and leading to his discovery of almost 100 new cave-dwelling species.

Steinmann, now a research associate with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s Zoology Department, most recently discovered a new species of pseudoscorpion named after the city closest to where it was found—none other than CU’s hometown of Boulder. Steinmann said that he knew almost immediately that the critter that is now known as Larca boulderica was a new species.

Dave Steinmann (right) with his son, Nathan (left), and wife, Debbie (center), as they get ready to go caving. (Photo: Dave Steinmann)

When he first spotted it in Mallory Cave, one of Boulder’s most well-known cave systems thanks to its role in bat conservation, he immediately noticed its unique, almost lentil-shaped body and adaptations for cave living, such as its pale color. These specimens were later verified as a new species by Mark Harvey, a pseudoscorpion expert at the Western Australian Museum; Harvey and Steinmann recently published details of the discovery in ZooKeys.

Steinmann notes that it’s typically not difficult to discern when a specimen is a new species, as it happens pretty frequently in the ancient cave systems right below our feet.

“I always say that if I want to discover a new species, I just need to visit a new cave,” he says.

Why are caves such a great place to make new discoveries? The answer lies in their role as a sort of refuge from climate change, Steinmann notes. In caves, insects can hide from the effects of temperature, floral and faunal changes that happen more rapidly in the outside world, facilitating isolated evolutionary changes.

Changing cave life

However, even cave life is changing. Lately, the temperature inside of caves, typically very cold, has been observed to be rising on a minuscule scale. Although this may seem trivial, even a few degrees’ difference can have immeasurable effects on the delicate life structures within the caves.

Similarly, outside temperatures affect which species go in and out of the cave systems, most notably bats. With the recent spike in white-nosed syndrome in bat populations, the number of bats in cave systems has decreased dramatically, with disastrous effects on internal cave species such as Larca boulderica, who survive on organic material—most often wood brought into the cave—and guano (bat fecal matter).

These changes are slow to progress, though, and there is still time to save cave ecosystems like that of Mallory Cave, which is closed to the public to protect the bat population inside (although it’s still possible to hike up to the cave entrance, a pleasant and short hike for anyone hoping to get outside).

So, how did Steinmann spot these teeny tiny bugs who live on bat feces? Well, after more than 30 years of experience, he has some tricks up his sleeve. One of the easiest methods he uses to spot tiny critters is simply by turning over rocks or pieces of wood.

When species like pseudoscorpions are disturbed by the movement or sense the carbon dioxide released by human breathing, they tend to skitter in every direction, looking for a new spot to curl up and revel in the damp darkness. When they move around, according to Steinmann, it’s just a game of whether you can catch them quickly enough.

The newly described pseudoscorpion Larca boulderica is about the size of a sesame seed and is only known to live in Boulder, Colorado. (Photo: Dave Steinmann)

To catch samples, Steinmann usually brings simple tools along with him—a painter’s brush and some rubbing alcohol. When the brush is wetted with the alcohol, it’s easy to run it along a surface and pick up all of the tiny things residing there, including minuscule species of bugs like Larca boulderica.

From there, it’s also easier to see what he’s found, as cave species are usually albino due to the lack of melanin— they don’t need pigmentation when there’s no sunlight—and they stand out against the dark ground and hairs of the paintbrush.

Looking for a gold bug

Despite being at it for multiple decades, Steinmann has no plans to slow down his caving career any time soon. He’s even made it a family pastime, and often spends time caving with his wife, Debbie, and his son, Nathan. He keeps an ongoing list of caves he plans to visit in the future and looks forward to making even more discoveries.

“I’d really like to find some kind of gold-colored bug and name it after the university,” he says, “or maybe even Coach Prime!”

He’s also enthusiastic about getting more students involved in caving, including caver and photographer Andres “Andy” Better, who will be a CU transfer student next fall. Steinmann emphasized how many different opportunities lie in the caving experience and says students of any background could find a niche interest in the hobby.

He also mentions local groups and clubs for both new and experienced cavers, including the Front Range Grotto and the Colorado Grotto, which meets at the Colorado School of Mines. He says that while anyone is welcome in caving, experienced members of the clubs can sometimes be protective of the places they visit, as human disturbances can harm delicate cave ecosystems, and caving as a hobby can be dangerous in a lot of ways.

However, if you’re looking to learn about caving with curiosity and respect, any of these clubs are great ways to get involved in this adventurous and exciting hobby—just be careful not to step in the bat guano because there could be a new species in there!

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��ƷSM��ӰƬ alum and experienced caver Dave Steinmann recently discovered a new species of pseudoscorpion in Mallory Cave, with a moniker honoring its namesake hometown.

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Patty Limerick and George Orwell merge to celebrate anniversaries

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:17:07 +0000

Patty Limerick and George Orwell merge to celebrate anniversaries Rachel Sauer Tue, 03/18/2025 - 09:17

Daniel Long

The historian loaned her voice to the author in the summer of 2024 to commemorate her 40th year in Boulder and the 75th anniversary of 1984

It was a hot summer evening in June of 2024, in a barn on the east side of Boulder, Colorado. On a low stage blanketed with a small, thin rug, two empty chairs sat facing each other, and between them, tall and menacing against the black backdrop, stood a red banner with “1984” written on it.

A large gray eye gazed out upon the audience from the center of that banner, lidless and all-seeing, an icon of surveillance.

Big Brother, it seemed, was watching, and he likely disapproved of what he saw.

��ƷSM��ӰƬ Professor Patty Limerick embodied 1984 author George Orwell in several public conversation, guided by the belief that “historians are people who try to reactivate the voices of the departed.”

His creator and harshest critic, George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair), had returned from the dead to discuss his life and work nearly 75 years after succumbing to tuberculosis at the age of 46 on Jan. 21, 1950, seven months following the publication of his most famous novel, 1984, the nightmare-vision that gave the world Room 101, memory holes, Newspeak and doublethink.

It would be the first of two public conversations he’d have over the summer, this one with TV show host Aaron Harber and the second with scholar, author and educator Clay Jenkinson.

Harber took the stage and faced the humble gathering of spectators. “I would like to introduce to you George Orwell,” he said.

Applause mounted in the sweltering barn as the author of Animal Farm, Road to Wigan Pier and numerous essays ambled down the aisle dividing the crowd and stepped up to meet Harber, dressed sharply but unseasonably in a jacket, trousers, tie and hat . . .

. . . and bearing a remarkable resemblance to ��ƷSM��ӰƬ history professor Patty Limerick.

Why channel Orwell?

“Tragedy . . . belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there was still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.”
—George Orwell, 1984

The year 2024 marked Limerick’s 40th in Boulder, which is another way of saying she moved there in 1984. She wanted to celebrate, but how?

“Then I thought, ‘Yes, 1984—when was that published?’ I thought I knew, but I didn't. And when I checked, it was the 75th anniversary.”

This convergence of round numbers gave Limerick an idea: Maybe she could observe both anniversaries together, with the same event, as only a historian would.

Her initial thought was to ask her friend Jenkinson to don Orwell’s persona while she interviewed him. Having impersonated many historical figures—Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and J. Robert Oppenheimer, among others—for a variety of audiences, including Supreme Court justices and U.S. Congress, he seemed the natural choice.

But Jenkinson didn’t have sufficient time to prepare for the role, which left Limerick wondering: Could she do the impersonation herself?

She’d impersonated President Richard Nixon in her American History survey course several years prior, thinking this would prove more engaging than her usual lecture on the man. “The lecture on Richard Nixon was so useless because I, as a person of my age group, have a lot of feelings about Nixon,” Limerick says. “The lecture would be quite interesting if you were curious about my feelings about Nixon, but if you thought you might want to learn about Richard Nixon, you came to the wrong place.”

Even without the standard accoutrements—makeup, clothing, five o’clock shadow—Limerick’s impersonation of the 37th president did the trick, she says. Her students asked thoughtful questions, and she got the chance to put some flesh and sinew on the bones of her Nixonian knowledge.

“I certainly conveyed some moments in which Nixon was insufferably full of questionable convictions, but I also . . . conveyed his accomplishments,” such as “the lessening of tensions with China and the signing of crucial environmental laws,” she recalls. “I feel I got it right.”

So, why not impersonate Orwell? Why not lend him her voice as she had Nixon?

Why not indeed. After all, Limerick says, “historians are people who try to reactivate the voices of the departed.”

Guaranteed tyranny

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”
—George Orwell, 1984

One of 1984’s most famous innovations is Newspeak, a language Orwell constructed to represent the nation-state of Oceania’s drive to control not just its citizens’ behavior but also what went on in their heads.

Patty Limerick (left), a ��ƷSM��ӰƬ historian, embodied George Orwell during a televised conversation with Aaron Harber. (Screen grab: PBS)

“The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc (English socialism), but to make all other modes of thought impossible,” Orwell says in his appendix to 1984, “The Principles of Newspeak.”

“It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.”

“Newspeak,” says Limerick, “is the foundation of guaranteed tyranny. You don’t let people have the words that they need. What became of justice? What became of freedom? What became of honor? They can’t ask those questions if they don’t have those words. People can’t resist if they don’t have the word ‘resist.’”

Orwell held strong views about the relationship between word and thought. He famously criticized nebulous prose in his essay “Politics and the English Language” by arguing that fuzzy writing both emerges from and leads to fuzzy thinking.

Decades later, not fully realizing her indebtedness to Orwell, Limerick made a similar case in her essay “Dancing with Professors,” though she approached the issue from an educational rather than a political angle. Yet both agreed that the stakes of clarity are high: freedom of thought for Orwell, the legitimacy and survival of academia for Limerick.

But what about some of the words that appear in the media these days—words like “mistruths” in place of “lies”? Would Orwell consider these examples of Newspeak?

Not necessarily, Limerick argues. For one thing, these words, wooly as they may be, add to the English language, creating new shades of meaning, while Newspeak feeds on subtraction.

“Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?” the Newspeak enthusiast Syme asks of 1984’s protagonist, Winston Smith. “Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.”

For another thing, a word like “mistruth,” says Limerick, is often used not by the powerful to maintain their power but by media outlets that are trying to report on falsehoods without using incendiary words like “lie” or “liar.”

“If you're going to call the leader of the United States a liar repeatedly, and his supporters are not gentle and forgiving people, you’re going to spend much of your conscious life wondering how you’re going to cope with the consequences of your having said he’s lying.”

Newspeak does not deal in such subtleties, Limerick believes. Newspeak is where subtlety goes to die.

Two plus two equals five

“You are a slow learner, Winston,” said O’Brien gently.
“How can I help it?” (Winston) blubbered. “How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”
“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”
—George Orwell, 1984

Another of Orwell’s stickier inventions in 1984 is doublethink, or the capacity to believe two logically opposed things at once—things like war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.

“Doublethink is the power of tyrants to say contradictory things and not be held responsible for the disparities,” Limerick explains. “It is really bad, and really dangerous, and really perilous.”

Winston discovers how perilous when he’s interrogated by O’Brien, a character he assumes is a friend but who turns out to be a member of the Thought Police tasked with rooting out thought-criminals. After learning of Winston’s secret opposition to Ingsoc, O’Brien tortures him relentlessly to convert him back into doublethink, arguing that it “is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.”

Yet Limerick points out that it is important not to mistake the direct contradictions of doublethink in 1984 with the paradoxes of real life.

Take historical figures, for example. The more one learns about them, says Limerick, the more complex they become, to the point that they may force students of history to hold seemingly contradictory thoughts when appraising them.

This happened to Limerick herself with William Stewart, senator of Nevada from 1865-75.

“Environmental activists and historians hold Stewart in contempt because he was the guy who wrote the 1872 mining law, which enshrines the notion that individuals can just go out and make mining claims and owe nothing in the way of revenue to the government,” she says.

Yet Stewart also proved crucial to getting the Fifteenth Amendment passed in 1870, which granted African American men the right to vote—an accomplishment Limerick urges everyone to admire.

Evidence sometimes demands conflicting feelings, Limerick says. Villains can do heroic things, and heroes can do villainous things, including Orwell. The great champion of free thought also expressed complicated, often inconsistent views about women, Jews and Catholicism. He wasn’t perfect, and any estimation that claimed he was would be flat. Posterity can both praise and blame him simultaneously—paradoxical, but true.

But that doesn’t mean two plus two will ever equal five.

Orwell’s lingering relevance

“We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing.”
—George Orwell, 1984

The conversation between Jenkinson and Limerick’s Orwell, organized by the Vail Symposium, took place on Aug. 21, 2024, at the Donovan Pavilion in Vail. That night, the two engaged in an often funny and frequently tetchy back-and-forth about Orwell’s childhood, his views on socialism and his enduring legacy.

“Doublethink is the power of tyrants to say contradictory things and not be held responsible for the disparities. It is really bad, and really dangerous, and really perilous,” argues historian Patty Limerick.

When, about three-quarters of the way through the discussion, Jenkinson revealed he was wearing a 1984 T-shirt, Orwell stared at it, nonplussed, and asked, “My understanding from that shirt is that my name and that book are still recognizable?”

“Universally!” Jenkinson proclaimed. “One of the most recognizable books written in English and certainly one of the most recognizable books of the 20th century. And it has become extremely important again in the last dozen years or so because the world is having a strange flirtation with authoritarianism, and one of the ways that people have coped with this abroad and at home . . . is to go back to your book. And they find solace in it, they find warning in it, they find hope in it, and they find discouragement in it, but it is a key text as people try to sort our way through this extraordinarily difficult time in modern history.”

A long silence followed while Orwell gathered his thoughts.

“I’m having such mixed feelings,” he admitted to Jenkinson. “I hoped that what I wrote about (in 1984) would become mocked, humorous. ‘He thought these terrible things were going to happen. Nothing like that happened! Boy, did he get that wrong!’

“As an author, I am gratified knowing that (1984) went on and on,” he added. “(But) as a human being who welcomed a child (his adopted son Richard Blair) into the world, I’m not anything but shaken to believe that this book is still so relevant.”

Yet Orwell’s distress turned to horror when Jenkinson delivered the worst news of the night: the definition of the word “Orwellian.”

“When we say ‘Orwellian,’” Jenkinson said, “we mean surveillance, torture, discrimination, disappearances, propaganda, lies, permanent war, keeping the class system, keeping down the poor … ‘Orwellian’ is a dystopian word for us meaning a nightmare world.”

Orwell winced at this revelation. “The things I tried to prevent, the things I tried to warn people about, they associate with me?” he railed. “Change that word!”

Jenkinson held out his hands, welcoming Orwell’s ideas. “What would you prefer?”

Orwell offered two alternative definitions: one about intellectual openness and diversity, the other about the necessity of precise language.

But a third definition, one governed not by foreboding or criticism but by a zeal for life and all it contained, can be culled from the beginning of Orwell and Jenkinson’s talk.

“If you think . . . that I wrote 1984 when I knew I was dying, and knew that this would be my last book, and that the grimness of this book comes from the melancholy and despair of a dying man, you have that wrong,” Orwell said. “I lived with a commitment to being alive that never, never faltered.”

Perhaps the only thing comparable to Orwell’s commitment to being alive is Limerick’s commitment to keeping him alive—or, if not him, at least his memory. He won’t be memory-holed on her watch.

“I hate it so much that he died when he did, just a few months after 1984 came out, and that he was so sick and so frail while he was writing it,” she says. “I wanted to do anything I could to provide people today with an interlude where he was speaking.”

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The historian loaned her voice to the author in the summer of 2024 to commemorate her 40th year in Boulder and the 75th anniversary of '1984.'

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Top illustration: Márton Kapoli

An ultrafast microscope makes movies one femtosecond at a time

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 16:18:01 +0000

An ultrafast microscope makes movies one femtosecond at a time Rachel Sauer Tue, 03/11/2025 - 10:18

New ��ƷSM��ӰƬ research harnesses the power of an ultrafast microscope to study molecular movement in space and time

The interactions in photovoltaic materials that convert light into electricity happens in femtoseconds. How fast is that? One femtosecond is a quadrillionth of a second. To put that in perspective, the difference between a second and a femtosecond is comparable to the difference between the second right now and 32 million years ago.

Subatomic particles like electrons move within atoms, and atoms move within molecules, in femtoseconds. This speed has long presented challenges for researchers working to make more efficient, cost-effective and sustainable photovoltaic materials, including solar cells. Imaging materials on the nanoscale with high enough spatial resolution to uncover the fundamental physical processes poses an additional challenge.

Understanding how, where and when electrons move, and how their movement depends on the molecular structure of these materials, is key to honing them or developing better ones.

Ultrafast nano-imaging of structure and dynamics in a perovskite quantum material also used for photovoltaic applications. Different femtosecond laser pulses are used to excite and measure the material. They are focused to the nanoscale with an ultrasharp metallic tip. The photo-excited electrons and coupled changes of the lattice structure (so called polarons, red ellipses) are diagnosed spectroscopically with simultaneous ultrahigh spatial and temporal resolution. (Illustration: Branden Esses)

Building on more than five years of research developing a unique ultrafast microscope that can make real-time “movies” of electron and molecular motion in materials, a team of ��ƷSM��ӰƬ scientists published in Science Advances the results of significant innovations in ultrafast nanoimaging, visualizing matter at its elementary atomic and molecular level.

The research team, led by Markus Raschke, professor of physics and JILA fellow, applied the ultrafast nanoimaging techniques they developed to novel perovskite materials. Perovskites are a family of organic-inorganic hybrid materials that are efficient at converting light to electricity, generally stable and relatively easy to make.

Working with a thin perovskite layer, the researchers directed ultrashort laser pulses onto tiny metallic tips positioned above the perovskite layer. The tip functions like an antenna for the laser light and focuses it to a spot much smaller than what is possible in conventional microscopes. The tip is then scanned across the perovskite layer, creating an image pixel by pixel. Each image provides one frame of a movie as the different laser pulses are varied in time.

The movie also has “color,” albeit in the infrared and invisible to the human eye but where the molecules and electrons respond. Through different wavelengths of light, the researchers can follow both the electron and molecular motion and their coupling, which is what controls the photovoltaic efficiency in perovskites.

This milestone not only helps them better understand the missing links between the perovskite’s crystal structure and composition and its performance as a photovoltaic material but also led to the surprising discovery that more disorder seems to facilitate better photovoltaic performance.

“We like to say that we’re making ultrafast movies,” Raschke says, adding that there have long been many unknowns about the elementary processes after sunlight gets absorbed in photovoltaic materials and how the excited electrons move in them without being dispersed, but “for the first time, we can actually sort this out because we can record spatial, temporal and spectral dimensions simultaneously in this microscope.”

Molecules as spectators of how the electrons move

In recent years, much research has focused on perovskites, particularly in the quest to create more efficient and sustainable solar cells. These materials absorb certain colors of the visible spectrum of sunlight effectively and can be layered with other materials, such as silicon, that catch additional wavelengths of light the perovskite does not absorb.

"This is a way to examine the material properties on a very elementary level, so that in the future we’ll be able to design materials with certain properties in a more directed way."

“(Perovskites) are easy to fabricate and have a very high solar cell efficiency, and can be applied as a very thin film,” explains Roland Wilcken, first author on the new paper and a post-doctoral researcher in Raschke’s research group. “But the problem with this material is it has relatively low photostability.”

Improving the material’s performance is no easy feat. There’s a large possible combination of chemical compositions and preparation conditions of perovskite solar cells, which affect their structure, performance and stability in ways that are difficult to predict. This is a challenge also faced by many other complex materials used for semiconductors, quantum materials, displays or in biomedical applications.

This is where the ultrafast microscope helps the researchers gain the spatial and temporal information needed to optimize the material—and in turn—find a good compromise between stability and performance.

Building the ultrafast microscope was a challenge, explained Branden Esses, a physics graduate student and research contributor. The team used nanotips, coated in a platinum alloy or gold, which are brought within nanometers of the perovskite layer, then hit with a sequence of laser pulses.

The first pulse excites the electrons in the visible, and subsequent pulses in the infrared watch how the electrons and molecules interact and move in time, Esses says, adding that “if you shine a light on this very tiny tip, the light that comes back is very weak since it only interacts with very few electrons or molecules; it’s so weak that you need special techniques to detect it.”

So, they developed a special method, modulating the light beams and using optical-amplification techniques to reduce noise and background to isolate the desired information.

Both how “the light is focused at the nanometer scale with the tips and how it is emitted and detected was essential to get enough contrast and signal to make these ultrafast movies of the material,” Wilcken explains.

And thanks to the ultrafast microscope technology, researchers are able to capture ultra-high-resolution images of femtosecond movement, measuring atomic motion in the molecules with very high precision. A particular feature of this development is the ability to resolve the dynamics of the molecular vibrations as a spectator of how the material responds to the photoexcited electrons.

Building better and functional materials from the bottom up

“This is a way to examine the material properties on a very elementary level, so that in the future we’ll be able to design materials with certain properties in a more directed way,” explains Sean Shaheen, a professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering who provided the material sample and collaborated on the research.

“We’re able to say, ‘We know we prefer this kind of structure, which results in, for example, longer lived electronic excitations as linked to photovoltaic performance,’ and then we’re able to inform our material synthesis partners to help make them,” Esses adds.

One of the surprising results of the work is that “in contrast to conventional semiconductors it seems that more structural disorder gives rise to more stable photogenerated electrons in hybrid perovskites,” Raschke explains. With the ultrafast microscope it became possible for the first time “to directly image the role of molecular order, disorder and local crystallinity on the optical and electronic properties of materials in general.”

This discovery is expected to have a profound impact on material science for advancing the performance of novel semiconductor and quantum materials for computing, energy and medical applications.

The instrument development was supported by the National Science Foundation, through STROBE, an NSF Science and Technology Center for which Raschke serves as co-principal investigator.

Roland Wilcken, Branden Esses, Rachith Nithyananda Kumar, Luaren Hurley, Sean Shaheen and Markus Raschke contributed to this research.

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New ��ƷSM��ӰƬ research harnesses the power of an ultrafast microscope to study molecular movement in space and time.

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