Profiles

Josef Michl, chemist who loved mountains, passes away

Anonymous — Wed, 15 May 2024 18:53:36 +0000

Josef Michl, chemist who loved mountains, passes away Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/15/2024 - 12:53

CU Boulder professor of chemistry recalled as great scientist, teacher, colleague, friend, mentor and lover of the outdoors

Josef Michl, a professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder, passed away May 13 while on a visit to Prague. He was 85.

Colleagues describe him as a great scientist, teacher, colleague, friend and mentor, as well as a valuable member of the CU Boulder Department of Chemistry. Born in Prague and raised in the former Czechoslovakia, Michl joined the department in 1991.

Michl created fields and set research agendas in chemistry, making seminal contributions in diverse disciplines—including organic and inorganic and materials synthesis photochemistry, laser spectroscopy and magnetic resonance and theoretical and computational chemistry. His scientific legacy will echo for generations, colleaugues say.

CU Boulder Professer Josef Michl created fields and set research agendas in chemistry, making seminal contributions in diverse disciplines. (Photo: Neuron Foundation)

Equally adept at theoretical and experimental work, Michl was a prolific scientist who published almost 600 articles, held 11 patents and co-authored five books.

He was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1984. Among many other awards he received, he was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honorary member of the Czech Learned Society, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Sloan Fellow and a recipient of the Schrödinger Medal.

He left Czechoslovakia in 1968, completed postdoctoral work with R.S. Becker at the University of Houston, with M. J. S. Dewar at the University of Texas at Austin, with J. Linderberg at Aarhus University, Denmark, and with F. E. Harris at the University of Utah, where he stayed and became a professor in 1975 and served as chairman from 1979-1984.

He held the M. K. Collie-Welch Regents Chair in Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin from 1986-1990, after which he moved to CU Boulder. In 2006, he accepted a joint appointment as a research director at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague.

Michl held close to a hundred visiting professorships and named lectureships; delivered hundreds of invited lectures at institutions and conferences; served on many professional and editorial boards, advisory councils and committees; and organized several international meetings.

Michl cared deeply about the Department of Chemistry and left a generous gift that will fund the Josef and Sara Michl Chair of Chemistry.

“Josef was a true intellectual whose interests were deep and broad,” colleagues say. He was fluent in a dozen or more languages, studied literature and history, loved the outdoors and traveled the world with his wife, Sara. They hiked many of the planet's mountain ranges.

“When in doubt, go up,” he said, applying this principle to life and work. He inspired many colleagues, students and postdocs who will miss his brilliance, humor and sanguine disposition.

Michl is preceded in death by Sara, who passed away in 2018. He survived by his brother, Jenda, son, Jenda, and his grandson, Mason.

Top photo provided to Economic Magazine by Josef Michl

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CU Boulder professor of chemistry recalled as great scientist, teacher, colleague, friend, mentor and lover of the outdoors.

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William B. Wood, pioneering scientist, passes away at 86

Anonymous — Mon, 13 May 2024 20:04:39 +0000

William B. Wood, pioneering scientist, passes away at 86 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/13/2024 - 14:04

A distinguished professor emeritus of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, Wood helped transform CU Boulder into a nationally ranked hub of biomedical science, improved science education and appeared on the debut album of folk legend Joan Baez

William Barry Wood III, who loved science, music, poetry and education in equal parts, and was a distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB) at the University of Colorado Boulder, passed away on May 9 in Boulder. He was 86.

Bill Wood came to CU Boulder in 1978, leaving a professorship at Caltech to serve as MCDB department chair. He continued in this department as teacher, researcher and administrator until his retirement in 2008. “His clear-thinking mind and kind heart helped to make MCDB a nationally ranked department of modern biomedical science,” said Richard McIntosh, another chair of the CU Boulder department.

In 1972, following important discoveries early in his career, Wood at age 34 became one of the youngest researchers ever elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Later, Wood also emerged as a pioneer in the shifting field of science education. His innovations contributed important ideas and methods for improving the teaching of science at all levels.

William Barry Wood III was a distinguished professor emeritus in the CU Boulder Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology.

Bill’s German-born wife, the late Renate H. Wood, became a distinguished Boulder poet, and their sons, Oliver and Christopher, have gained international musical recognition as The Wood Brothers. Wood himself was a masterful guitar player, songwriter and folk musician throughout his life.

In high school, he played in a group with John Hartford, who went on to an impressive career as a revered banjo musician. While still an undergraduate at Harvard in the late 1950s, Bill teamed with Joan Baez on her historic first recording, “Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square.”

The young scientist earned his PhD in 1963 from Stanford University. As a graduate student there, working with Paul Berg in the Department of Biochemistry, Wood learned important skills for the study of macromolecules, such as nucleic acids and proteins. As a young professor at Caltech, he collaborated with Robert Edgar, a geneticist, to study the formation of a virus that infects bacterial cells, known as a “bacteriophage” (for bacteria eater).

Edgar had previously treated samples of T4 bacteriophages with radiation and chemicals that damaged their DNA, making mutations in many different genes. Most of these mutant phages could still infect bacteria, but those bacteria failed to assemble new infective phages as a result of the mutant gene.

Notably, when bacterial cells were simultaneously infected by two phages that were mutant in different genes, infective phages were produced. Thus, the different viral genomes could complement each other, with each providing a functional copy of the gene that was mutant in the other.

Wood invented a method by which one took two populations of bacteria, each infected with a different mutant phage, and broke up the cells in each population to make two samples of bacterial cell cytoplasm, filled with whatever each mutant phage could make.

When these samples were mixed, the materials from one infected population could complement the materials from the other infected population, enabling infective phages to form outside of living bacterial cells. This process became known as “in vitro” (in glass) complementation, because the mutant phages complemented each other without a living cell to help.

This innovation allowed Wood and others to learn by biochemistry and electron microscopy which parts of phage T4 were made by the products of each phage gene. With this information, they could put together a pathway for phage assembly from the protein products of the individual phage genes.

In vitro complementation became an important tool in the hands of many scientists studying virus formation. This valuable contribution helped biologists in the 1960s and ‘70s to elucidate the formation of complex viruses and to significantly combat virus infections.

In the mid-1970s, Wood felt he had contributed what he could to the study of bacterial viruses. His experience combining genetics and biochemistry in the study of hard biological problems led him to seek a new project in an area more complex than the assembly of a virus. One such challenging subject at the time was the problem of how animals develop from a fertilized egg into their adult form.

A distinguished English scientist, Sydney Brenner, had recently introduced the study of a small round worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, into the field of developmental biology. This tiny animal, only 1 millimeter long, lives in rotting fruit. It can be fed on bacteria in the laboratory, and it grows to adulthood in just three days, making it easy, cheap and fast to study.

Several young scientists had already gone to Brenner’s lab to learn how to study C. elegans and brought their projects back to labs in the United States. One of these scientists was David Hirsh, who was on the faculty at MCDB in Boulder, so Wood arranged to do a sabbatical in Hirsh’s lab.

During that year, Wood worked with Hirsh and several of his students to make numerous mutant strains of worms. They identified several that inactivated genes important for the early stages in worm development. Particularly informative were their temperature-sensitive mutants, which developed well when grown at temperatures as low as 60^o, but displayed interesting developmental defects when grown at elevated temperatures closer to 85^o.

These mutants identify genes whose products are needed for normal development. Therefore, they have subsequently been studied by numerous labs to elucidate key players and pathways in development.

Excited by his research experience in Boulder, Wood considered setting up a lab at Caltech to study worm development. But the CU Boulder MCDB department was seeking a chair who could lead the department in valuable new directions. Several enthusiastic members of the department flew to Pasadena, unannounced, and convinced Wood to move his work and his family to Colorado.

In Boulder, Wood quickly assembled an excellent lab of his own, and he also organized the hiring of superior scientists engaged in the same process of using genetic manipulation to study complex biological problems.

At the time, experts were debating whether the developmental fates of individual cells in early embryos are determined by internal factors that are packaged into those cells or determined by external cues from neighboring cells. Wood’s group found compelling evidence for both internal factors and external cues, a finding that has been borne out across organisms.

Wood’s lab discovered a new type of organelle that is not bounded by a membrane. These organelles, called "P granules” in worms, are examples of internal factors that are delivered to particular cells in early embryos and are critical for the normal development of those cells. P granules are the founding members of an ever-growing list of liquid-like condensates that serve diverse roles across organisms.

Finally, Wood himself studied how an organism develops its left-right axis, which in worms becomes apparent when embryos have only six cells. He documented that one-cell embryos already show signs of knowing their left side from their right. From then on, his Colorado license plate read WORMS1.

Singing with Joan Baez

The eldest of five children, Wood grew up in St. Louis, where his father, a renowned physician and medical researcher, taught at Washington University. In 1955, Dr. W. Barry Wood moved his family to Baltimore, when he became the head of the Johns Hopkins Medical School. The elder Wood had been an All-American quarterback at Harvard and a nationally ranked tennis player. Coming from an athletic family, Wood won the Maryland State Junior Tennis Championship at age 17 and played on Harvard’s varsity tennis team.

While an undergraduate chemistry major at Harvard, Wood also devoted time to music, playing his guitar in a group called The Raunch Hands and hosting a weekly program on the campus radio station. There he met singer Joan Baez, then in her first year of college. In 1959, Bill and Ted Alevizos teamed with the future folk legend to make a record now renowned as her debut album. The next year, Joan produced her first solo album, “Joan Baez,” while Bill opted for a career in science.

In an interview conducted at Stanford in 2015, Wood reflected on that early fork in the road. He recalled with a modest smile his parting with Joan Baez: “It was very clear which of us should go to grad school at Stanford and which of us should go to the Newport Folk Festival and become a star.” Pausing, he added: “I have to say, with all due respect to the scientists, that was the most fun I ever had, singing with Joan Baez.”

Wood’s parents were both educators, and throughout his career Wood was interested in finding ways to teach that would help students at all levels learn science efficiently and well. “When my kids started school in the 1970s, I got interested in what they were going to experience, and I was impressed by a book called 'How Children Fail' by John Holt," Wood said. "His message was that for kids to learn, they need to be doing things, not just listening to a teacher. That was my introduction to active learning.”

Textbooks were focused on memorizing pathways, names of enzymes and so on, and I wanted to try to put some life into it.”

Toward the end of his career, Wood turned his full attention to research on science education. In harmony with work spearheaded by Bruce Alberts from the National Academy of Sciences and by Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman in the Department of Physics at CU Boulder, Wood helped to develop a “questions” approach to teaching, suitable for any science pedagogy.

To challenge and assist college-level science teachers, he worked with Dr. Jo Handelsman, who later became a science advisor for President Barak Obama. The pair started the National Institutes of Undergraduate Education in Biology. Now known as NIST, this thriving organization has had far-reaching effects, helping to train thousands of faculty, especially at R1 institutions, how to teach actively.

“Textbooks were focused on memorizing pathways, names of enzymes and so on, and I wanted to try to put some life into it,” Wood said. With “active learning,” lectures become participatory events, and students retain more than when they are simply spoken to. The amount of material presented is reduced, but the amount students retained is greater.

This approach has been adopted widely, and it follows the Chinese principle of instruction, stated as a motto in Wood’s first biochemistry book: “I hear, and I forget; I see, and I remember; I do, and I understand.” In 2016, the Genetics Society of America gave Wood its Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education, calling him “a pioneer in the reform of science teaching.”

The Society cited Wood’s role in the development of the influential National Academies Summer Institutes for Undergraduate Education in Biology and his service as editor-in-chief of CBE-Life Sciences Education, published by the American Society for Cell Biology. “Bill is not only an excellent educator himself,” states Rachelle M. Spell of Emory University, “he helped start a revolution across STEM teaching.”

In 2018, Jenny Knight, an associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at CU Boulder, served as president of the Society for the Advancement of Biology Education (SABER). That year, SABER instituted the Bill Wood Graduate Student Talk Award, which was very dear to Wood’s heart. According to Knight, who knew Wood as her mentor and colleague, he had “a passion for supporting the next generation of researchers.”

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CU Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, prolific writer and theology expert passes away at 87

Anonymous — Mon, 06 May 2024 14:26:49 +0000

CU Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, prolific writer and theology expert passes away at 87 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 05/06/2024 - 08:26

Ed Miller passed away peacefully at his home in Boulder, Colorado, on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. He was 87 years old. Ed was born in Los Angeles, California and lived there for many years ultimately graduating from the University of Southern California with a Ph. D. in Philosophy. He then accepted a teaching position at California Lutheran College in Thousand Oaks, California. He taught there for two years before moving with wife, Yvonne, and three young sons, Terryl, Tim, and Tad to Northfield MN, where he accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St. Olaf College. Having lived in California all of his life, Ed was delighted with the change of seasons in Minnesota. He especially loved the snow and would become, over time, an excellent skier! Ed was very pleased, in 1966, to accept a position of Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.

Ed Miller, professor emoritis of philosophy thrived in theology. Many of his students took up Christian pursuits.

These were the years, soon to become decades, that Ed flourished. In addition to being promoted to Full Professor in 1976, he was a prolific author, writing eight books and many articles. As his interest deepened in theology so did his teaching: he taught classes in Christianity in both the Department of Philosophy and for the Department of Religious Studies. He also founded the Theology Forum and was able to bring some of the most well-known scholars of Theology to speak at the University of Colorado. A few years earlier, Ed had started a Doctorate of Theology during a sabbatical year in Basel, Switzerland. In 1980 with his new wife, Cindy, he traveled back to Switzerland to finish his Doctorate of Theology degree and obtained it in 1981. In 1982, he and Cindy welcomed a new child, Sean. Ed thrived in the university life and his interactions with his students left an indelible mark on them.

Many students credited Ed's classes and conversations with their decision to become a Christian. Some even became pastors or decided to pursue a life of Christian service.

The Miller household was an energetic hub of student and colleague get togethers, dinners, and amazing Christmas parties. Early in 2002, however, Ed was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor, and decided to retire from the university.

Even through the years of chemotherapy and surgeries, Ed continued to write and study. Ed was preceded in death by his mother, Georgia Barrington and is survived by his wife Cindy, and sons Terryl, Tim, Tad (daughter Hansa Miller), and Sean Miller (Amanda Parker) and his brother Bill Miller (Sally Miller) and their children Don, Denise, and Doug and their families. A memorial is scheduled at Atonement Lutheran Church in Boulder, Colorado, on June 1st, 2024 at 3pm. In lieu of flowers please send donations to TRU Hospice of Boulder county.

Ed Miller passed away peacefully at his home in Boulder, Colorado, on Tuesday, April 23, 2024. He was 87 years old.

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Keith Julien, world-renowned CU applied mathematician, passes away at 58

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 21:37:23 +0000

Keith Julien, world-renowned CU applied mathematician, passes away at 58 Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/30/2024 - 15:37

Longtime leader in his department and university made significant contributions to his discipline and also helped engineer the reorganization of the College of Arts and Sciences

Keith Julien, professor and chair of the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado Boulder, died unexpectedly April 14 at Saint Joseph Hospital in Denver after a short illness.

Famous for his disarming laugh, clear-eyed judgment and potent intellect, Julien was a world-renowned scholar; an insightful and inventive researcher; an energetic, generous and productive collaborator; an engaging and effective teacher and mentor; a visionary administrator for the Department of Applied Mathematics; and a devoted husband, loving father and cherished friend.

Julien’s 33-year affiliation with CU Boulder began in 1991 as a postdoctoral research associate in JILA, where he served from 1991-94. After an advanced study postdoctoral fellowship from 1994-96 at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, he joined the Department of Applied Mathematics in 1997 as an instructor.

Keith Julien (left, with his wife, Susan) came to CU Boulder in 1991 as a postdoctoral research associate in JILA.

He moved up the ranks in the department, becoming an assistant professor in 1998 and earning tenure and a promotion to associate professor in 2003; he was named a full professor in 2008. Julien was elected department chair in 2015, a role in which he served until his passing.

Julien was an exceptional mentor, a leader on campus and an internationally recognized scholar who touched the lives of countless students, collaborators, colleagues and peers. His sudden passing is a shock to the department, the university and the wider academic community, his colleagues said.

Julien advised 12 PhD students and eight postdoctoral scholars, several of whom have become prominent scientific researchers. He inspired and skillfully bolstered the careers of applied math faculty and colleagues around the world.

Born June 12, 1965, Julien grew up in London, England, the second of four children of first-generation immigrant parents from Grenada. In addition to his studies, he was a vigorous and exceptional student athlete, accomplished in both soccer and cricket.

He also enjoyed music and played the electric bass. His academic trajectory took shape when he received his BSc degree in mathematics and physics with first-class honors from King’s College, University of London, in 1986.

Julien then moved to the University of Cambridge, where he received his Part III Certificate of Advanced Studies in 1987, on the basis of which he was accepted into the Cambridge doctoral program. He was awarded the J.T. Knight Prize in 1988 and received his PhD in applied mathematics and theoretical physics in 1991 for a dissertation titled “Strong Spatial Resonances in Convection,” studying under reknowned mathematician and physicist M.R.E. Proctor.

A visionary leader

Julien’s visionary leadership has left an indelible imprint on the Department of Applied Mathematics and the university. First, he substantially influenced the reorganization of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2022 with a new system that strengthens the authority of the three deans of division, an idea originally articulated in the Cumalat-Julien Academic Futures White Paper (2018).

Keith Julien as a young scholar (left) and at a surprise birthday party in 2015.

Second, he played a major role in the development of multiple new or pending degrees, including the BA and BS in statistics and data science, the BS in applied mathematics and the professional MS in applied mathematics.

Third, for over a decade, Julien relentlessly worked to unify departmental space so that APPM PhD students would no longer be scattered through different buildings on campus, as they have been since 1989.

Even before serving as chair of applied mathematics, Julien led a committee to develop a plan for new facilities, which culminated in the CU Board of Regents’ approving on April 11 to construct a new shared Chemistry and Applied Mathematics facility; the approval came just three days before Julien’s passing. This new facility represents a major milestone for the department, with construction scheduled to begin this fall, and occupancy planned for late 2026.

Research focused on fluid dynamical phenomena

Julien’s applied mathematics research has had major influence on the understanding of fundamental geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamical phenomena. He is recognized as a world expert in the instability, dynamics, evolution and simulation of important fluid processes, including rapidly rotating convection, magneto convection, fluid turbulence and the coherent structures that spontaneously appear in these flows.

Julien authored more than 80 research papers, which appeared in leading international journals, and his work is cited more than 4,000 times, according to Google Scholar.

Keith Julien (left) with William Barham and Bobby Braun (right), former dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

One of his most consequential contributions to the field of geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamics is the development of reduced or simplified partial differential equations valid in the limit of rapid rotation. Many important flows are strongly affected by rotation, such as thermal convection in the ocean, which regulates overturning rates that bear on climate change; convective flows in the outer core of the Earth, responsible for Earth's magnetic field; and flows in the Sun’s turbulent outer layer, which is an important region for solar magnetic activity, such as solar flares and coronal-mass ejections.

In a seminal series of papers, Julien pioneered the development of multi-scale asymptotic methods and fast numerical algorithms to derive and simulate a reduced set of equations that approximate the governing Navier-Stokes equations for rapidly rotating convection. This enabled the exploration of extreme parameter regimes that are otherwise inaccessible to either state-of-the-art high performance computing hardware or laboratory investigation.

These developments led to the discovery of the spontaneous emergence of large-scale structures such as vortices and jets in turbulent rapidly rotating convection, predictions that were subsequently confirmed by direct numerical simulations of the full equations, albeit under much more modest conditions.

These advances attracted, in turn, a number of groups to this research area, in both experiment and theory, all motivated by Julien’s pioneering work. Together with many collaborators, Julien extended these ideas to the study of accretion disks in astrophysics, convection in a strong magnetic field, shear-flow instability, wind-driven circulation and, more recently, to ocean mixing by the doubly diffusive salt-finger instability.

Taken together, these applications demonstrate that highly anisotropic but fully three-dimensional turbulence is susceptible to instabilities generating large-scale coherent structures resembling those present in geophysical and astrophysical fluid dynamical systems.

Keith Julien was father to sons Simon and Theodore and enjoyed coaching their soccer teams.

Recognized widely by his peers

Julien received multiple awards recognizing his achievements, including CU’s Creative Research and Creative Works Junior Faculty Development Award in 1998 and Faculty Fellowship Award in 2004.

In 2017, he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, and in 2022 he was awarded the Kirk Distinguished Fellowship at the Isaac Newton Institute, University of Cambridge. In 2024, Julien was slated to be a principal lecturer for the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Summer Program, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Through the years, Julien tirelessly served the scientific community. He co-directed two NCAR/IMAGe Theme-of-the-Year Programs for Geophysical Turbulent Phenomena in 2008 and Rotating Stratified Flows in 2012.

He served on the Committee of Visitors for External Evaluation of the Division of Ocean Sciences for the National Science Foundation in 2015 and 2019. In 2014, he co-organized a 14-week program on the mathematics of turbulence at the NSF Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM), UCLA, and since 2014 he served as an associate editor for the journal Nonlinearity.

In the summer of 2018, Julien co-organized an international workshop on rotating convection at the Lorentz Center, Netherlands, and he was serving as the lead organizer of a planned 2025 IPAM, UCLA workshop titled “Rotating Turbulence: Interplay and Separability of Bulk and Boundary Dynamics.”

He also served numerous times on scientific panels for NSF and NASA, and as principal investigator and/or co-principal investigator on research grants in the mathematical sciences, atmospheric sciences, solar physics and oceanic sciences.

Julien is survived by his loving wife, Susan; sons, Simon and Theodore; father, O’Neill, and mother, Agnes; older brother Kelvin; younger sisters, Sandra and Sherma; and a wide circle of friends.

Keith Julien’s colleagues and friends collaborated in the writing of this obituary.

Longtime leader in his department and university made significant contributions to his discipline and also helped engineer the reorganization of the College of Arts and Sciences.

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Professor Emeritus of Economics Chuck Howe passes away at 93

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 16:21:40 +0000

Professor Emeritus of Economics Chuck Howe passes away at 93 Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/11/2024 - 10:21

Chuck Howe, Professor Emeritus of Economics, passed away on March 3, 2024, at the age of 93.

Chuck Howe was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1931.

The family, which included younger son John, moved to Westerville, Ohio in 1937. At the conclusion of World War II, the family moved to Joplin, Missouri.

Chuck graduated from Joplin High in 1948 where he met his future wife, JoAnne Blanke. He attended Rice University (then Rice Institute) from 1948 to 1952, majoring in Economics and graduating Phi Beta Kappa and one of ten Outstanding Seniors chosen by a faculty-student board.

At graduation, he was Commissioned Ensign in the U.S. Navy, stationed in Long Beach, California, but returned briefly to Joplin to marry JoAnne who then accompanied him to Long Beach where Chuck's ship, minesweeper U.S.S. Redstart, was stationed.

The honeymoon was short-lived since Chuck's ship departed for Korea in December, 1952, returning to the U.S. in June, 1954.
Chuck enrolled in the Economics Ph.D. program at Stanford, receiving the degree in 1958.

With two children added, they moved to Purdue University where Chuck was Assistant Professor of Economics in the emerging Krannert School of Management where he taught Management Science.

At that time, Chuck also began research in the water resources field, producing a book on the Economics of Inland Water way Transportation that was published by Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C. In 1964, JoAnne, Chuck, and now four children, took a temporary post at the University of East Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation's University Development Program to help build the program in Economics.

Chuck continued water research with management studies of the Tana River Basin in northeastern Kenya. On the basis of Chuck's water research, he was invited in 1965 to join the staff of Resources for the Future as Director of the Water Resources Program.

The family moved to D.C. where they lived until 1970 when Chuck was appointed Professor of Economics at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Chuck was appointed a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1973 based on his water research and a Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists in 2012. He was the principal author of the 2007 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Chuck and JoAnne, with whatever children were at home or able, continued to travel, both for work and for pleasure. They lived in Indonesia, Holland and England and traveled more to countries on every continent.

Chuck was an avid runner, having competed in more than 30 Bolder Boulder (10K) races as well as several Crescent City Classics in New Orleans. While in Indonesia he was part of the Hash House Harriers running group.

After this accomplished career, Chuck and JoAnne retired to Frasier Meadows Retirement Community in Boulder, where they became a valued part of that community for over 20 years.

Chuck died March 3, 2024, and is survived by his wife of 71 years; children John, Karen, Bo (Conway) and Kathy (Larry); seven grandchildren: Theron, Sarah, John, Ray, Morgan, Lauren, Luke; and one great-grandchild, Addison.

The family extends special thanks to all the staff of the Summit Care Center at Frasier for their devoted and loving care in the last year of Chuck's life. Their dedication is remarkable.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to Frasier Meadows Retirement Community.

There will be a Celebration of Life on Friday, April 12 at 2:30pm in the Eldorado Room at Frasier. All are welcome.

In Chuck Howe's honor, make a gift to the Economics Department.

Chuck Howe, Professor Emeritus of Economics, passed away on March 3, 2024, at the age of 93.

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Monique LeBourgeois, pioneering sleep researcher, dies

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Jan 2024 20:51:46 +0000

Monique LeBourgeois, pioneering sleep researcher, dies Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/04/2024 - 13:51

She helped answer questions about sleep disruptions in children, knowledge that has been helpful to parents

Monique LeBourgeois, associate professor of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder and an expert on sleep and circadian physiology in children, died on Nov. 28, 2023. She was 54.

LeBourgeois’ colleagues and friends were “devastated by her premature passing,” Marissa Ehringer, CU Boulder chair and professor of integrative physiology, said in a statement. “Monique was an exceptional scientist, teacher, mentor and person who will be greatly missed by many in our department and across campus.”

In addition to the personal loss, Ehringer noted the loss to science: “Her innovative research pioneered methods for assessing circadian rhythms and sleep measures in toddlers in the home environment.”

In 2018, for example, the LeBourgeois Sleep and Development Lab found that dimming the lights in the hours before bedtime can help children fall asleep. Specifically, the lab found, exposing preschoolers to an hour of bright light before bedtime almost completely shuts down their production of melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone.

Further, exposure to bright light just before bedtime suppressed the production of melatonin for at least 50 minutes after lights were turned off. The study was the first to assess the hormonal impact nighttime light exposure can have on young children.

Monique was an exceptional scientist, teacher, mentor and person who will be greatly missed by many in our department and across campus. ... Her innovative research pioneered methods for assessing circadian rhythms and sleep measures in toddlers in the home environment.”

“Light is our brain clock's primary timekeeper,” LeBourgeois explained at the time. “We know younger individuals have larger pupils, and their lenses are more transparent. This heightened sensitivity to light may make them even more susceptible to dysregulation of sleep and the circadian clock.”

LeBourgeois and her colleagues also shed new light on the biological, neurological and environmental effects of light and electronic screen time on children.

In her research, LeBourgeois developed creative, groundbreaking techniques to rigorously conduct circadian and sleep research in the home environment, including performing salivary melatonin and high-density EEG/polysomnography assessments on toddlers.

LeBourgeois earned her BS in psychology in 1995 from the University of Southern Mississippi. Under the mentorship of John Harsh, a scientist who was investigating sleep disturbance in childhood, she later earned her MS in counseling psychology, MS in experimental psychology and PhD in experimental psychology, at the University of Southern Mississippi.

She did postdoctoral research at Brown Medical School, under the mentorship of Mary Carskadon, professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. There, LeBourgeois’ interest in measurement of sleep homeostasis and circadian rhythms blossomed, and she began to apply these concepts and measures to evaluate the developmental aspects of sleep behavior regulation in young children.

LeBourgeois had an “outstanding way of working with families and kids and maintaining their engagement throughout longitudinal studies,” Carskadon said.

In 2010, the CU Boulder Department of Integrative Physiology recruited her to join the faculty as a tenure-track professor. She conducted longitudinal studies examining the development of Process C and Process S (two components of a sleep regulation concept) across early childhood, as well as researching the sensitivity of the developing circadian system to light exposure.

LeBourgeois was successful in securing external research funding and received continuous funding from the National Institutes of Health since 2001. She engaged in collaborative research, where she created opportunities, generously lent her expertise, and shared her passion for developmental sleep and circadian science, colleagues said.

Beyond her scientific accomplishments, LeBourgeois devoted much of her academic life to mentorship, always asking trainees, “What do you want your life to look like?”

She invested time, energy, trust and love into helping trainees to successfully achieve their goals. Recognizing the mentorship she received, she sought to sustain it by creating the Mary A. Carskadon Sleep and Circadian Summer Research Fellowship in 2017.

This annual fellowship provided enriching and unique opportunities for students to receive hands-on research experiences, form relationships with families in the community and develop basic professional skills. Many of her trainees have gone on to successful careers in professions including biomedical research, health care, science policy and industry.

She published nearly 80 peer-reviewed journal articles and had another 10 in progress or under review at the time of her death. Among the recognitions she received were the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Young Investigator Award in 2003, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine/Pfizer Scholars Grants in Sleep Medicine Award in 2005, and a College Scholar Award from CU Boulder in 2022.

Last year, she was named a Health Research Accelerator Fellow at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

Her pivotal research advanced our understanding of sleep and circadian physiology in early childhood.

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Counting to three and then flying

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 21:14:31 +0000

Counting to three and then flying Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/02/2024 - 14:14

Neuroscience and art practices major Rachel Suter joins The Ampersand podcast to discuss asking ‘Why not?’ and stepping into the unknown

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Rachel Suter steps to the precipice and looks over the edge. Below her, a glowing aqua pool that’s 30 feet down. As many times as she’s pushed off the edge, she still feels a little zing.

She dives into a pool at the newly renovated Casa Bonita restaurant in Denver. The way the water blends in and out of sapphire blue reminds her of her newest painting, exploring neurological degeneration, which reminds her, in turn, to finish her neuroscience homework before she can get to her next student body government meeting.

Amid the noise of the restaurant, the sweet fried scent of sopapillas, her fellow performer in a gorilla costume, she takes a breath, counts back from three and soars.

Rachel is a lot of things, not just a woman who flies. She crafts visual art based on scientific systems and principles she explores in her neuroscience coursework. She guides the College of Arts and Sciences student body as vice president. She's a model, she dives, she approaches new opportunities asking, “Why not?”

At the top of the page: Rachel Suter works on her art. Photo by Kylie Clarke. Above: "Vibrant" by Rachel Suter.

She recently joined host Erika Randall, associate dean for student success in the College of Arts and Sciences, on "The Ampersand,” the college podcast. Randall—who also is a dancer, professor, mother, filmmaker and writer—joins guests in exploring stories about “ANDing” as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

Their free-wheeling discussion addressed confronting fear, the mechanics of diving and oatmeal baths, among many other topics.

Suter: When I was younger, I always wanted to dive, but I couldn't because I have pretty bad eczema. I was a competitive gymnast, and then, following that, I did competitive dance. So, you know, just parallel sports, almost. And then senior year of high school, I just kind of decided, like, end of COVID, I'm really bored. I'm just going to give it a try, you know, just for fun?

Randall: Screw the eczema. There's oatmeal baths for that.

Suter: So true.

Randall: Yeah. (laughs) My kiddo has eczema. OK, so you're going to try it.

Suter: Yes.

Randall: You're going to go in.

Suter: Mm-hmm, and like, in the past, I had gone cliff-diving with friends just at lakes and vacations and…

Randall: See, again, you say that so casually: ‘In the past, I'd gone cliff diving.’ There isn't a world where I walk up to the edge of something and jump off of it. There was no fear for you there.

Suter: Yeah, I have two brothers, and they're the type that they see a cliff, and they will jump off of it. I just don't want to be left out of that, you know? And then, just having the gymnastics background, and the worst that could happen in gymnastics is you fall on a really hard surface, and that's really scary. But with diving, it's like you're falling on water, so there's only so much bad that could happen. And the hurt, it's going to hurt, but it won't last that long. And cliff diving, I don't go from too high, so the risk is minimal.

But I think the most important thing is when I do the one, two, three count, I have to trust myself that I'm going to go for it, you know? And it's like…

Randall: Is that what you say literally every time you get to the edge?

Suter: Yep.

Randall: OK, well, I want to hear it. Walk me through. Put me in your body.

Suter: Oh, man. Yeah, I think it's just a quick visualization of the dive. I mean, if it's a forward dive or a backflip, not too much. It's pretty simple. But if it's more of like a twisty dive, just stepping through what my arms are going to do and whatnot, and then standing on the edge, marking my place in the water. And if it's a smaller pool, just making a plan for what I'm going to do underwater because you can flip out of it either way.

So, choosing space and also choosing if I'm going to flip out of it right away or if it's safe enough to go and bounce off the bottom almost, which I can do at pools like Casa Bonita, but I can't at cliff diving spots like Paradise Cove. So, yeah, just making a plan, going through it, and then just counting off, like one, two, three, go, and just trusting that on three, I would go.

Randall: Life lessons with Rachel Suter, making a plan, trusting it. One, two, three, go. OK, so is that what took you to interview at Casa Bonita, that just one, two, three, go, let's do this?

Suter: Yeah. I mean, I didn't expect to get the job. So, it was more of a, ‘I might as well.’ That would just be so cool. I have a dance background, so I have the performance aspect.

Randall: And had you been there as a kiddo if you're from the Springs?

Suter: No, I'd heard all about it, but I had never actually been.

Randall: OK, so you heard the lore.

Suter: Yes.

Randall: But you had never been and had the terrible taco salad with the Pepto-Bismol chaser.

Suter: Never had it.

Randall: Never had it. And did you hear about how there used to be the electrical room at the bottom of the dive pool?

Suter: They fixed that.

Randall: OK. (laughs)

Suter: Yeah, so I ended up going because just so many of my friends and family had just been, like, oh, you have to. You dive. You just have to do it. I was like, OK.

Randall: So, when we think about this pattern of success, this way that you set up the visualization, all of the things, does this show up for you in other ways in your life? Because on top of being now this enigmatic Casa Bonita diver, you are also a neuroscience student. You're also a visual artist. You are on student government.

You are a leader in your community. You are one of the kindest humans I know. And, and, and, and then you tell me you model, and I just couldn't even put that part into the Rachel egg. Talk to me about if that method for getting to the edge and looking over, does that serve you in other spaces?

Suter: Yeah, it's more of like, I'm young and I know that this is the time in my life where I will most be able to try new things and pursue different things and have no consequences if it doesn't work out.

Randall: OK, wait a second. You really just have that freedom in your mind, like this is the time when I'm young. How good were your parents, or did they just never know if you were home?

Suter: (laughs) No, my parents are amazing. They’re very adventurous and pushed us, my brothers and I, all to try new things and just be confident in what we're doing.

Randall: Did they throw you into the pool when you were a little kid with all your clothes on and see if you would drown?

Suter: I don't know, but they might have.

"Too Much to Hold" by Rachel Suter

Randall: They might. They were that parenting book.

Suter: Yes. And if we had a little interest in something, they would help us and support us and provide the materials to do those, which I really appreciate and I know not everybody has. So, I think that definitely has allowed me to become a better artist and interested in sciences because they allowed me to have those resources as a kid. And so now that I have the freedom of my own time, I'm able to explore those.

Randall: Were science and art always married for you? Because when I look at your art, first of all, it's astounding to me.

Suter: Thank you.

Randall: I had seen the original piece that you shared with me with, this gesture of hands under the sternum and the heart dripping out of your cage. And then there were other things that showed up in your art, this perspective, detail, that kind of pencil sketch fury. Like, there's a quickness that also maybe is not showing how much time it takes. I mean, it's a lot of time.

Suter: Yes, quite. And a project will take probably 15 more hours. It really depends. But the more time-consuming part is the research and development portion.

Randall: Yes, and you can see that the science is in it. And the research is in the science.

Suter: Yeah, because a lot of my art does deal with scientific topics. A lot of times, I just don't even know what I want to do, and it starts with the research and just taking notes and deciding on a topic that I like and I'm passionate about. And so, I'll continue doing research and start with little one-inch by one-inch thumbnail sketches of little ideas I could do.

Randall: Kind of storyboarding?

Suter: Yes, so it starts with just a lot of research and then thumbnail sketches. And then it almost becomes a conversation on the page of, oh, I like this idea, but not this. So, it's a way to have a conversation with myself because I never know what it's going to be when I first start. And it goes through so many stages. And sometimes what I end up with is not even on the same topic as what I began with.

Click the button below to hear the entire episode.

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Neuroscience and art practices major Rachel Suter joins The Ampersand podcast to discuss saying ‘Why not?’ and stepping into the unknown .

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Distinguished professor receives 2023 Excellence in Leadership Award

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 22:26:48 +0000

Distinguished professor receives 2023 Excellence in Leadership Award Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/14/2023 - 15:26

Ruth Ellen Kocher, a CU Boulder distinguished professor of English, earns the CU system award in recognition of her work advancing diversity, equity and inclusion practices across campus.

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Paul Phillipson, physics department's first biophysicist, dies at 90

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 18:30:26 +0000

Paul Phillipson, physics department's first biophysicist, dies at 90 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/30/2023 - 11:30

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Eight decades later, Marine (and distinguished professor) to revisit Iwo Jima

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Eight decades later, Marine (and distinguished professor) to revisit Iwo Jima Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 11/01/2023 - 00:00

Clint Talbott

Richard Jessor, CU Boulder distinguished professor of behavioral science and co-founder of IBS, records an oral history with the National World War II Museum and will return to the island in March, on the 79^th anniversary of the battle

Because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, Richard Jessor joined the U.S. Marines and went to war. But when he came face to face with the enemy—a dead Japanese soldier on the island of Iwo Jima—he again recharted his life, turning away from war and toward education.

Jessor will return to Iwo Jima in March to observe the 79^th anniversary of the battle, one of the fiercest and most famous of World War II. He will join the Reunion of Honor ceremony, held annually for veterans from the United States and Japan, “honoring their service and sacrifice and fostering peace” as former adversaries meet near the landing beaches.

“I don’t know how it will feel to be standing once again on the black sand of the landing beach almost 80 years later, but I know there will be tears,” Jessor said recently.

After four days of fighting, he and his company were pulled from the front line and allowed to write one letter. Jessor wrote to his parents. He thanked them for everything. And he said goodbye, writing: “I don’t think I’ll get off the island alive.”

As Veterans Day approached, Jessor spoke with this magazine about the indelible marks of war, his oral history interview with the National World War II Museum, his coming reunion with soldiers on both sides of the Iwo Jima battle and his disgust at leaders who blithely discuss war as an instrument of policy rather than a gruesome choice of last resort.

Jessor, who will turn 99 this month, is a distinguished professor emeritus of behavioral science at the University of Colorado Boulder. He served on the CU Boulder faculty for 70 years before retiring in 2021. He co-founded and later directed the university’s Institute of Behavioral Science, and he wrote an influential 1970 report on the lack of ethnic diversity on campus.

But in February 1945, he was a 20-year-old Marine. Before then, Jessor had little conception of who the Japanese people were. “It was only really after we got overseas on our training base and on Maui in the Hawaiian Islands” that he realized how many servicemen viewed the Japanese as the “Yellow Peril,” a prejudice Jessor recalls with “a great deal of dismay.”

That prejudice, he suggests, was a way to dehumanize America’s foes.

For weeks before invading, U.S. forces shelled and bombed Iwo Jima, hoping to weaken the Japanese fighters, many of whom were holed up in miles of tunnels underneath the island’s only promontory, Mount Suribachi.

At the top of the page: Richard Jessor in his Boulder home in 2021. CU Boulder photo by Glenn Asakawa. Above: Marines landing on the beach of Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945.

On the evening of Feb. 18, 1945, Jessor was with the Fourth Marine Division on a tank-landing ship when the crew was summoned to the deck. There, a Marine commander said, “Tomorrow night at this time, a lot of you are going to be dead.”

The shocking message might have been tempered by a belief that the fight would be easier or quicker than it actually would be. Iwo Jima comprised only 8 square miles, and the plan was for U.S. forces to conquer the island in three to five days, then sail off to invade Japan.

Things did not go according to plan. Fighting lasted 36 days.

Chaos and death

Jessor was in the fourth wave of Marines to land on Iwo Jima.

“Our tractor hit the beach and got stuck in the loose sand. We were sitting there, artillery shells exploding all around, and we were immobilized. And so, we began to just jump out of the rear of the tractor into the water, run around the vehicle and hit the beach.”

His first sight was a fellow Marine lying on his back, blood bubbling from his mouth, dying.

“That was my introduction to war,” he said.

Jessor was hit in the back by shrapnel during the first day ashore, but he was able to continue fighting. After four days of fighting, he and his company were pulled from the front line and allowed to write one letter. Jessor wrote to his parents. He thanked them for everything. And he said goodbye, writing:

“I don’t think I’ll get off the island alive.”

Back in battle, Marines were taking souvenirs from dead Japanese soldiers, and the Marines were particularly interested in Japanese “good luck flags,” which bore well wishes from friends and family and which were often tied around the soldiers’ waists.

Jessor remembers emerging from a foxhole one morning and seeing the body of a Japanese soldier. Jessor bent over to see if the man had a flag under his shirt.

“And as I’m bending over, I see that he has letters in a pocket on his shirt,” presumably from the man’s family. “I suddenly have this epiphany: I have letters in my pocket in my shirt.”

Richard Jessor (holding the Japanese "good luck flag") and 4th Marine Division buddies during the battle of Iwo Jima. Photo courtesy of Richard Jessor.

Like the soldier in Thomas Hardy’s “The Man He Killed,” Jessor felt their shared humanity.

“I was like, what are we doing here? What is this about? What difference could it make?”

At that time, Jessor notes, he had already said goodbye to his parents. He vowed never to go to war again, whatever the reason. “I made a personal resolve that I wanted to do something that made a difference. And that has really animated me from that time on.”

For the moment, though, Jessor was still in battle. He recalls that enemy fighters were always hidden. “You fired your weapon when you saw that something was being fired at you, but you didn’t see the enemy. You didn’t see Japanese soldiers. You went to an opening of a cave, and the guy with the (flamethrower) would point his weapon into the cave opening and just fire away, hoping to incinerate any occupants of the cave,” Jessor said.

“But the enemy was not personified in actual persons.”

A live Japanese soldier, a hopeful flag-raising

That changed for Jessor about 10 days after landing, when a Japanese prisoner was caught alive by Marines in the front line. No one on the front line spoke Japanese, and Jessor was ordered to take the prisoner, at gunpoint, back to the beach, more than a mile away, to headquarters and a translator.

As Jessor and his prisoner walked through the rear lines of Marines, who had never seen a live Japanese soldier, a Marine leapt up and exclaimed, “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

"I had to point my rifle at that Marine and say, ‘I have orders to shoot anybody who touches my prisoner.’” The Marine relented. Another Marine made the same threat, and Jessor responded the same way.

“I think back on it now, and I don't really know whether I would have been able to do what I was ordered to do. And I'm afraid that I might have been able to do it, because that's what you were trained to do.”

Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press captured this iconic image of the flag-raising on Suribachi. Richard Jessor saw the flag from below and yelled to his colleagues, who were buoyed by the apparent milestone. The battle raged on for weeks longer, however.

Earlier, five days after the Marines landed, Jessor’s division was striving to reach higher ground on Iwo Jima. As he faced enemy forces with his rifle, “I happened to turn around and looked over my shoulder, and I saw the American flag on top of Suribachi.”

This is the flag-raising captured in an iconic image of World War II, by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press. That picture won the Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1945 and inspired the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington County, Virginia.

In that moment, Jessor was stunned and started screaming, “The flag’s up! The flag’s up!”

The flag-raising was significant, because it meant that Jessor and his fellow Marines had their flank covered. “And it animated me to begin to feel that maybe we could make it,” he said. Jessor did survive, but the battle wasn’t done. Weeks of fighting lay ahead.

When the Marines finally did secure the island, “we knew that the battle was essentially over,” he recalled. The Marines were ordered to return to the landing beach.

“I remember coming to the beach and seeing this long array of crosses where the temporary burials of Marines were, and I still have that vision of seeing and knowing. It just filled your vision, the rows of crosses on from Blue Beach, all the way down the beach, and in that one vision, you encapsulated the cost of the war.”

Back to Maui

With Iwo Jima secured, the Marines sailed back to Maui to train for their next mission—the planned invasion of Japan. After training during the day, Jessor recalled, he and five other men in a tent would drink beer in the evening and “relive every inch of the battle of Iwo Jima.”

“Somebody would say, ‘You remember we were in this bomb crater, and it hit so-and-so, and his intestines hit so-and-so?’ And we went through every aspect of our experience on Iwo, reliving it night after night. And as a psychologist, I think of that as sort of being cathartic and getting things out of your subconscious.”

But one man in the tent, a young recruit who had not yet seen battle, had heard enough. “Finally, he exploded at us and said, ‘I’m sick of listening to the same s—t night after night. I’ve just had it!’”

I find myself so offended when I hear representatives in Congress or in government speak so casually about war … about using war as an instrument of policy.”

Jessor rose and gave the recruit a lecture. “I said, ‘You know, we're fighting for free speech, and nobody's going to tell me that they've had enough of our talking.’”

Jessor added, “I've been a professor for 70 years, but I guess I was a pedant even before I became a professor.” As it happens, Jessor soon forgot this episode but was reminded of it decades later, when a fellow Marine, Red Kelly, contacted Jessor.

Kelly, now deceased, had become an American history teacher in a Boston high school. “He said to me, ‘Every one of the students I’ve had over these years knows about Dick Jessor.’” Kelly had used Jessor’s lecture to illustrate “good wars and reasonable wars.”

Jessor also recalls being on Maui when the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “We were thrilled. We thought it was a great thing,” he said. “This meant we wouldn’t have to go back into battle.”

The costs of war

However, “It wasn’t long after I got discharged before I realized that it was a horrendous event, the dropping of the bomb. I have come to the conclusion that it was unnecessary—even though most arguments are that it saved us further killing of Americans, in Japan this time. There were other ways of dealing with the emergence of a nuclear bomb.”

Interments of the 4th Marine Division on Iwo Jima. Suribachi is in the background. "It just filled your vision, the rows of crosses on from Blue Beach, all the way down the beach, and in that one vision, you encapsulated the cost of the war.”

He added: “I haven’t been able to resolve this. I can’t think of any war that I would support any more. And yet I supported the invasion of Europe and the attack on and the defeat of Nazi Germany—as a Jew, particularly, given the horrors of the Holocaust.”

There are times, Jessor said, when a nation must resort to making war on an enemy. “But the way I’ve resolved this in my own mind is there must always be some alternatives that would forestall what emerged.”

Jessor wishes more people, particularly those in power, shared his deep hesitation about war. “I find myself so offended when I hear representatives in Congress or in government speak so casually about war … about using war as an instrument of policy.”

“There is no real sense among so many who are in power about the absolute inhumanity of resorting to war and what it means, not just in the time of the events but in how it just continues its consequences,” shaping the lives of those who endured it, Jessor said.

His dismay about this is one reason he chose to do an oral history with the National World War II Museum, to further document the true face of war.

Meanwhile, he looks forward to traveling to Iwo Jima in March to commemorate the 79^th anniversary of the battle. He will travel with Jane Menken, a distinguished professor of sociology who succeeded Jessor as the director of the Institute of Behavioral Science. The two also happen to be married.

About meeting Japanese veterans of Iwo Jima, Jessor said, “I see myself embracing them. We are, as I think of it now, comrades.”

A vial of black sand from the beaches of Iwo Jima sits next to a disarmed Japanese hand grenade on Richard Jessor's desk. CU Boulder photo by Glenn Asakawa.

Learn more about Jessor’s time at and effect on CU Boulder in this short biography and at this link. Read his 1970 report on the lack of ethnic diversity at CU Boulder at this link. See the National World War II Museum’s news release about next year’s visit to Iwo Jima here.

Richard Jessor, CU Boulder distinguished professor of behavioral science and co-founder of IBS, records an oral history with the National World War II Museum and will return to the island in March, on the 79th anniversary of the battle.

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