Deans Notes - June 2022

One of the few social scientists who has conducted research on adult men involved in abortions is Professor of Sociology Jennifer Reich. “Everybody benefits when individuals can control their own reproduction, but the benefit can be invisible for cis men since they don’t absorb the risks of pregnancy and it’s not written on their bodies,” said Reich.

Men Have a Lot to Lose When Roe Falls
The New York Times, May 26

Note: Reich’s research was also featured in National Right to Life, New York Times International, and Star Tribune among others.

While much of the circus surrounding the Depp-Heard trial feels entirely of this moment (a livestream that regularly draws half a million viewers, the rhetoric around “believing women,” and the sheer power of Mr. Depp’s fans to shape the narrative) in many ways what we are witnessing is a story as old as time. “We no longer have what Hester Prynne had, but we have a version of it,” (referencing the 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, whose subject is shamed for her adultery) said Gillian Silverman, Professor of English.

Why We Love to Watch a Woman Brought Low
The New York Times, May 20

“Almost across the board, park residents are renting the land under their homes,” said Sociology Associate Professor Esther Sullivan, whose work focuses on mobile homes. “So a missed lot payment puts not only their housing at risk, but can also wipe out their accrued wealth."

‘We’re all afraid’: Massive rent increases hit mobile homes
The Washington Post, June 6

If you go to the Confluence on any given hot day, you may see people wading into the water. The city doesn’t recommend it, but there's no firm ban that’s enforced. Alan Vajda, Associate Professor of Integrative Biology, who has done academic research on the South Platte going back to 2001, said lots of work is going on to improve the ecosystem and mitigate contamination, but, "It's just a question of whether the resources are there to keep up with the growing challenges of population and climate change."

Swimming in the South Platte River: Still not a good idea!
Denverite, May 31

An interdisciplinary team from CU Denver and CU Boulder has won a CU Next Award for their project, Data Advocacy for All: An Open Access Digital Repository for Innovative Data-Driven Curricula. The CU Next Award is an initiative to support faculty pedagogical innovation across CU campuses. At CU Denver, the team is led by John Tinnell, Associate Professor in the English Department, and Cameron Blevins, Associate Professor, Clinical Teaching Track in the History Department. Tinnell and Blevins will partner with digital humanities faculty at CU Boulder, the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship (CRDDS), and CIRES Earth lab to develop a curriculum to teach students how to ethically and effectively inquire with data, communicate with data, and deploy data with a goal of creating more just futures. The project will build and then teach an eight-module sequence at both CU Boulder and CU Denver beginning in 2023,...

Philosophy’s Boram Jeong, along with Ethnic Studies'  Boyung Lee, Sammy Lee, and Chad Shomura recently revived the exhibiton inVISIBLE | hyperVISIBLE at the Dairy Arts Center (running now to July 16th). The theme inVISIBLE | hyperVISIBLE captures the struggles of Asians and Asian Americans to survive and thrive in the face of strong anti-Asian sentiment. Asians and Asian Americans are alternately made invisible and hypervisible through stereotypes such as “model minorities,” “honorary whites,”“perpetual foreigners,” and “enemy aliens.” Yet, Asian America is remarkably complex due to cultural diversity, various migration routes, and different socioeconomic circumstances.  inVISIBLE | hyperVISIBLE will showcase Asian and Asian American artists, scholars, performers, and community organizers from different ethnic, gender, and geographic backgrounds.

The Consortium for Mathematics and its Applications (COMAP) is pleased to announce the results of the 38th annual Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM). Honorable Mention (top 30%) went to CU Denver’s ICB-CAU Xu Yilei, Xu Tianyang, and Xu Luru for “Problem C: Trading Strategies.” This problem had over 10,000 participating teams. This year, 15,105 teams representing institutions from twenty-two countries and regions participated in the contest.  

Christopher S. Beekman, Professor in the Department of Anthropology, recently published an edited volume titled, Waves of Influence: Pacific Maritime Networks Connecting Mexico, Central America, and Northwestern South America (Dumbarton Oaks). The Pacific Coast of the Americas linked Pre-Columbian complex societies from Mexico to Peru, facilitating exploration, communication, and transportation in a way that terrestrial routes could not match. Yet West Mexico, the Isthmo-Colombian Area, and Ecuador, with their great stretches of coastline, were marginalized by the definition of the Mesoamerican and Andean culture areas in the 1940s. Waves of Influence seeks to renew the inquiry into Pacific coastal contacts and bring fresh attention to connections among regions often seen as isolated from one another.

Congrats to Mathematical and Statistical Sciences Professor Florian Pfender for receiving an NSF Focused Research Groups in the Mathematical Sciences award. The title of the award is "Generalized Turan Problems." This is a collaboration with University of Illinois and Iowa State University. The CU Denver award is $370,085.

Associate Professor of Integrative Biology Timberley Roane and her colleagues recently published, “Application of the Indigenous evaluation framework to a university certificate program for building cultural awareness in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” This paper presents a case example of the Indigenous Evaluation Framework as applied to a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education pilot program. Indigenous methodologies include knowledge and data that are inclusive of historically marginalized groups, are highly meaningful, valid, and useful for all. A paradigm shift from Western evaluation methodologies to Indigenous evaluation is necessary when evaluating STEM programs that are committed to increasing recruitment, retention, and graduation of students from historically marginalized groups. This paper describes the use of the Indigenous Evaluation Framework during the first two years of the newly created Environmental Stewardship of Indigenous Lands program at the University of Colorado Denver.

Health and Behavioral Sciences Alum Channing Tate recently spoke with 144 older Black adults while conducting research for her doctoral dissertation about hospice care – what they knew about it, whether they’d consider it, what their experiences with hospice had been. She is undertaking this work as part of her duties in the Rising Star Position which was created by the CU Cancer Center. “The good thing about my dissertation was it included an education component, so once people fully understood what hospice is, they were like, ‘Oh, that’s a good thing’,” Tate said. “It showed me that there’s opportunity for change.”

Associate Professor of Philosophy Gabriel Zamosc recently published a piece on Nahua philosophy in the  American Philosophy Association (APA) Hispanic Newsletter. His essay is a 2021 APA Essay Prize Honorable Mention titled, “Reconsidering the Epistemological Problematic of Nahua Philosophy.”