Outstanding Graduate

Standout grad eyes career at nexus of biomedical, preclinical research

Anonymous — Tue, 07 May 2024 21:12:14 +0000

Standout grad eyes career at nexus of biomedical, preclinical research Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/07/2024 - 15:12

College’s outstanding undergraduate of spring 2024 focused his honors thesis on sex-based differences in sleep

As an undergraduate researcher, Grant Mannino has helped advance scientific understanding of sleep, perhaps to the detriment of his own volume of sleep.

Mannino is graduating this week with a double major in psychology and neuroscience, summa cum laude. He has been designated as the spring 2024 outstanding undergraduate of the College of Arts and Sciences.

While pursuing his degree, he has contributed more than 1,500 hours of undergraduate research, co-authored two peer-reviewed manuscripts, is first author of a manuscript under review, and has contributed to four other manuscripts and a book chapter.

Mannino, who went to high school in the Denver metro area, recently answered five questions from this magazine. Those queries and his responses appear below:

Question: If you were to briefly summarize the results of your honors thesis to a lay audience, what would you say?

College of Arts and Sciences Dean Glen Krutz (left) talks with Grant Mannino, the college's spring 2024 outstanding graduate, about his research and future plans. (Photo: Kylie Clarke)

Mannino: Essentially, sleep is being increasingly recognized as an important mediator of disease and has thus gained more attention as an outcome measure in studies of various subdisciplines of biomedical research (e.g., neuroscience). In my thesis, I found significant biological sex differences in the sleep of male and female mice (267 total) commonly used in research.

Specifically, female mice slept less than their male counterparts. Historically, however, female animals are underrepresented in biomedical research and underlying sex differences—as previously described—are rarely taken into account in data analyses.

In accordance with the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) initiative to improve rigor and reproducibility in biomedical research, I used these data to demonstrate that investigators should account for underlying sex differences when interpreting sleep in the context of disease models.

Question: When did you realize that you wanted to pursue a career in science?

Mannino: I’ve always had some natural interest in medicine but didn’t realize that I wanted to pursue a career in science until I joined a laboratory here at CU. Biomedical research provides this unique intersection between medicine and preclinical research that I really enjoy.

Simply spending as much time as I have in my lab has just solidified my desire to pursue a career in science.

Question: I understand that you mentor other undergraduate students; what motivates you to do this, and how do you find the time?

Mannino: I’ve had the opportunity to work in a big lab that often hosts students from summer programs and internships from various institutions/backgrounds. Once I had established proficiency in certain research techniques, I sought to serve as a peer mentor for newer/rotating students with the goal of helping them with their projects while building relationships and enriching their experience in the lab.

Question: You are hoping to pursue an MD/PhD; what is your hope for your career beyond that?

Mannino: Up to this point, I’ve largely been on the discovery side of research, where I’ve been interpreting results and disseminating findings. Whether I end up going the MD/PhD route or just doing a PhD, I’d definitely love to end up more on the implementation side of research. This way, I could potentially see some of the novel interventions/strategies that I’m familiar with actually improve the life of patients.

Question: Is there anything about your time at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ that was especially meaningful to you?

Mannino: The relationships I’ve been able to develop at CU have been (by far) the most meaningful to me. I feel extremely lucky to have spent the past few years working for two professors (Dr. Rachel Rowe and Dr. Mark Opp) who are both amazing people, mentors and scientists.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to build relationships across different areas of the same community with my friends, classmates, research colleagues and professors. I think that the culmination of all these relationships has shaped my undergraduate experience in the most meaningful way.

Top image: College of Arts and Sciences Dean Glen Krutz and Grant Mannino (Photo: Kylie Clarke)

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College’s outstanding undergraduate of spring 2024 focused his honors thesis on sex-based differences in sleep.

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Grad pondered death by black hole and found a life’s work

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 20:40:54 +0000

Grad pondered death by black hole and found a life’s work Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/18/2023 - 13:40

Rachel Sauer

College of Arts and Sciences outstanding graduate Abby Hartley embraces the complementary relationship between science and art

Some children gaze up in wonder at the boundless night sky and the universe of stars scattered in it—counting them, wishing on them, seeing shapes in them and weaving fantastical stories.

But not Abby Hartley. Abby gazed up and pondered death by black hole.

What if they (Abby uses they/them pronouns) fell into one of the massive and mysterious objects? What is the math underlying spaghettification? (Don’t ask.) (Actually, do ask: It’s the vertical stretching and horizontal compression of objects—including people—falling into black holes.) Would they be grateful for the deeper understanding of time dilation—or the phenomenon of time passing at different rates for different observers—as they were drawn farther and farther into the black hole?

Abby Hartley, the College of Arts and Sciences fall 2023 outstanding graduate, first became interested in astrophysics by pondering death by black hole.

So, Abby pursued an astronomy and astrophysics education at the University of Colorado Boulder to get answers. Named the College of Arts and Sciences outstanding graduate for the fall 2023 semester, they are graduating this week with their honors thesis, “The First Quiescent Galaxies in TNG300," already published in an academic journal.

“Abby is a brilliant, hard-working, organized and frighteningly mature young scientist,” notes Erica Nelson, a ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ assistant professor of astrophysical and planetary sciences and Abby’s research mentor and thesis advisor. “They are already operating at the level of a senior graduate student. I have no doubt that Abby will be a leader in the field.”

Which is a profoundly meaningful recognition of their hard work and expression of confidence in all that they have yet to achieve, but here’s what Abby considers a crowning accomplishment from the previous three and a half years: When Abby published their first research paper—yes, first, meaning there’s more than one—their mom proofread it before publication and their dad printed it out after. And like the proud parents they are, they stuck it on the refrigerator.

“My dad even highlighted some parts,” Abby recalls with a laugh. “He said, ‘I don’t totally understand all of it, but it’s so cool.’ Just knowing that I’ve always had that support from my family and friends has been so important. It’s a big part of why I’ve been able to accomplish what I have so far.”

Wanting to know more math

Speaking of Abby’s dad, he gets a decent amount of the credit for Abby’s first steps into science. An avid fan of science himself, he shared his passion for it by passing along the books he’d read to his adolescent child. Abby was the kid in middle school clutching a copy of The Elegant Universe and wishing they knew more math.

It wasn’t all science, though. Abby also cultivated a deep love for writing and art, nurtured by a voracious appetite for science fiction, and found as much fulfillment in pens and drawing paper as they found in the depths of differential geometry and tensor calculus.

For a long time, though, Abby thought it had to be one or the other—that declaring a major in astrophysics meant relegating art to the thing they did at home if they had time.

There was no particular moment when Abby realized that art and science can exist in symbiosis—as hand in glove rather than as two parallel but untouching tracks—but studying relativity helped.

“Initially, the rules of math and physics can seem pretty rigid,” Abby says. “But when you get to relativity, things bend a little bit more. Things are a little more fluid, and that’s been really exciting to me.”

So, while studying extragalactic astronomy as a member of Erica Nelson’s research group, Abby also tapped back into their love for art, designing an astrophysics art outreach project mentored by Zachory Berta-Thompson, a professor of astrophysics. As part of their project, Abby created digital illustrations highlighting the accomplishments of women and minorities in astrophysics; several are currently featured on the digital screens in common spaces in the Duane Physics building.

Abby Hartley's art highlighting the accomplishments of women and minorities in astrophysics includes Aomawa Shields, a University of California Irvine professor and one of Abby's heroes.

“Too many times, I’ve found myself to be the only non-male audience member in a seminar or presenter at a student talk series,” Abby says. “This inequity can be disheartening, but it has never dulled my passion for science. My goal as an astrophysicist is to help humanity unravel the mathematical mysteries of the cosmos, and to show other young scientists from historically underrepresented groups that they, too, belong in this field.

“We are all multifaceted human beings, and we shouldn’t feel pressured to stifle one passion to pursue a career in another. I was a scientist when I gave talks about my research into the first galaxies to stop forming stars in a cosmological simulation, but I was also a scientist when I painted a space-themed mural on the wall of a cat cafe.”

Abby contacted some of the scientists they featured in their art, including Jessica Mink and Aomawa Shields, and heard back from them, “so I got to talk with some of my personal heroes in astrophysics, which has been pretty amazing,” Abby says.

Pursue creative outlets

For their thesis research, Abby—whose educational path has focused on theoretical astrophysics—considered their scientific progression that began with black holes, extended to extragalactic astronomy and landed in quiescent galaxies, or galaxies that stop forming stars.

“They have dust, so in theory they should be perpetually creating stars,” Abby says. “Why aren’t they?

Using simulations from the IlustrisTNG project, a suite of cosmological galaxy-formation simulations, Abby and their research colleagues predicted that the first quiescent galaxies located by the James Webb Space Telescope will host massive black holes.

Abby Hartley defended their thesis on Halloween and, to emphasize the fact that science is fun, dressed as Howl Pendragon for the occasion.

During their research, Abby contacted noted astrophysicist Lars Hernquist at Harvard University, who became a study co-author and invited them to present their paper at Harvard. Another of Abby’s favorite memories of their studies is practicing their presentation at 2 a.m. with their mom, after going to a Beyonce concert several hours earlier, then flying to Massachusetts later that morning to present at Harvard.

Because science should be fun, Abby says, and because they defended their thesis on Halloween, they dressed as Howl Pendragon from Howl’s Moving Castle to do so and invited their thesis committee members to come in costume as well (one member came in a Starfleet uniform from Star Trek).

“I think that’s probably one of the most important things I’ve learned, that science is challenging and exciting and fun,” Abby says.

Last week, Abby submitted 11 graduate school applications and hopes to begin graduate studies next fall, which the ultimate goal of becoming a university professor and researcher. In the meantime, they will continue working with Nelson as a full-time researcher studying brand-new James Webb Space Telescope data. The one bummer is, due to scheduling conflicts, needing to give up a beloved job as a part-time barista and shelter worker at Purrfect Pause cat café in Boulder. That’s where they painted the space-themed mural, which features their cat, Oreo.

So, if Abby could offer advice to anyone considering a leap into science, they would “encourage other students to pursue their creative outlets alongside their technical research, so that no one feels like they have to leave a part of themselves behind to do scientific work.”

Abby Hartley creates digital art highlighting the the accomplishments of women and minorities in astrophysics

College of Arts and Sciences outstanding graduate Abby Hartley embraces the complementary relationship between science and art.

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Graduate completes triple major while leading student government

Anonymous — Tue, 03 May 2022 17:28:54 +0000

Graduate completes triple major while leading student government Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/03/2022 - 11:28

Clint Talbott

Kavya Kannan graduates with a BA in political science summa cum laude and majors in economics and international affairs; she is the A&S outstanding graduate for spring 2022

Kavya Kannan translates her values into action. Lots of action.

She is the first person of South Asian descent to serve as student-body president at the University of Colorado Boulder. In that role, she championed efforts to increase women’s access to tampons and pads on campus, and she created a fund for sexual-assault survivors, which was supported by a 5-kilometer footrace that she organized last month.

As she researched her honors thesis, she created an original dataset of sex trafficking and other indicators in India, research that can help explain varying rates of sex trafficking in India. On Thursday, May 5, she will graduate with a degree in political science, summa cum laude.

At the top of the page: Kavya Kannan will graduate with a triple major in political science, economics and international affairs (Photos by Ellie Johnson). Above: Kannan enjoys a sunny day below the Flatirons. Photos courtesy of Kavya Kannan.

Kavya is also a triple major, so she will graduate with majors in economics and international affairs in addition to political science. And she has been designated as the spring 2022 outstanding graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences—the first outstanding graduate to complete her degree with a triple major.

In a recent interview with James W.C. White, acting dean of the college, Kannan noted that she began her ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ college career as a double major—in political science and economics, both disciplines that captured her interest.

But her advisor noted that she was only two classes away from earning a major in international affairs.

“I was like, OK, sure. I have the time,” she recalled, adding that she’s grateful that she heeded the advice.

She also had the time and motivation to join student government. She served on its appellate court for two years but wanted “more agency to tackle issues and frustrations I had faced on campus” and decided to run for the top executive post. “Serving as student body president is a really big honor for me, to take on this responsibility and represent my community,” she observed.

“There are a lot of girls that I mentor that look just like me that don't think that leadership or politics is an area that they can influence,” she said. “So it's really important for me to break that door open and show them that these are realms that we can not only occupy but can be really influential in.”

Serving as student body president has been gratifying and has reflected the “intersection of all my identities as a woman, as a marginalized woman, and just as a student on this campus,” she added.

Kannan traced her desire to do an honors thesis on sex trafficking partly to a first-year course in Russian politics with Sarah Sokhey, associate professor of political science. Kannan wrote a policy brief on sex work and prostitution in Russia. That work eventually got published.

Later, she studied India and the United States with a comparative lens in a class taught by Tom Zeiler, professor of history, and a paper she wrote then was also published.

Sex trafficking in India garnered Kannan’s interest not just as a woman but as an Indian woman, she said. “Sex trafficking is horrible in India, unfortunately. When I go back to visit in India, I have seen victims of sex trafficking on the streets, and it's very scary because, as a woman, living in India, that that very much could have been my reality.”

Kannan was born and reared in Denver, but her parents emigrated from India. “I've had the privilege of attending higher education institutions, but not a lot of women back in India have had the privilege of doing that.”

“It's really important for me to study this problem,” she added.

Serving as student body president is a really big honor for me, to take on this responsibility and represent my community.”

In her research, Kannan found that women who lived in areas of India with lower rates of sex trafficking also lived in areas with higher education levels generally, with better anti-HIV education, and with more understanding that condoms help prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

Additionally, women who had the ability to make decisions in the home—for instance, as indicated by their having their own bank accounts—were less likely to become drawn into sex trafficking, which, Kannan notes, is a form of slavery.

After graduation, Kannan intends to take a gap year or two as a “breather.” She’s considering several positions in the financial sector, including being part of the Leadership Fellows Program with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Immediately after graduation, she’s traveling to Costa Rica for a week, then Europe for a month.

In the long term, Kannan plans to go to law school, probably an Ivy League institution on the East Coast. There, she said, she might focus on international criminal law or international human-rights law.

Kavya Kannan graduates with a BA in political science summa cum laude and with majors in economics and international affairs; she is the A&S outstanding graduate for spring 2022.

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Outstanding grad looks to trapdoors and emergency exits

Anonymous — Tue, 12 May 2020 22:57:58 +0000

Outstanding grad looks to trapdoors and emergency exits Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/12/2020 - 16:57

Cay Leytham-Powell

Aaron LaMaskin, the college’s spring 2020 outstanding grad, documented the curation process of a groundbreaking exhibition in Santa Fe

Interactions between museum curators and Native peoples have historically been fraught. This semester’s outstanding graduate, though, documented when they go right by looking at the revitalization of the groundbreaking exhibit “Here, Now and Always” at the Santa Fe Museum of Indian Arts and Culture.

Aaron LaMaskin

Aaron LaMaskin, graduating this semester summa cum laude with a degree in Anthropology, compared old and new by focusing on the collaborative process the museum has with Southwest Native peoples. What he found is that by including contemporary themes like “trapdoors” in the exhibit, the museum allows for different perspectives and takes on the same material, fostering, as LaMaskin puts it, ideological accessibility.

“There’s a limited amount that can be said about the past,” says LaMaskin. “While it’s very interesting to try and piece together that puzzle, to me it’s more interesting to try and put it together now for a contemporary society with all of the little clues that are left in the margins.”

Even before coming to the University of Colorado Boulder, LaMaskin was already interested in studying anthropology. Initially drawn by the idea of studying other cultures, he quickly realized that this was an outdated notion of the field. The new anthropology is more self-reflective, aiming to understand history and how we interact with each other from contemporary points-of-view.

For his thesis, LaMaskin took that interest and worked with the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe to document the curation process behind the newly revitalized exhibition, “Here, Now and Always.”

“Here, Now and Always” first opened at the museum on Aug. 18, 1997, and at the time was considered groundbreaking for its inclusion of the Native peoples’ perspectives. According to LaMaskin, this turned “the typical subjects of museum exhibitions into the curators.”

Aaron is an outstanding student, and the is the best kind of ambassador for the discipline of anthropology"

Twenty-three years later, though, the exhibit needed an upgrade, and, rather than just update the contents or completely change the concept, the curators, in collaboration with representatives of Southwest Native groups, decided to let the ideas of the exhibit evolve to better fit a new generation of Native peoples.

And so, LaMaskin worked with them trying to answer one major question: How has the process and product of this collaboration changed since 1997?

LaMaskin navigated this often-fraught space by synthesizing data and information from multiple sources, ranging from technical documents to conducting his own interviews with the different stakeholders of this group.

During one of these interviews, LaMaskin had a “transformational moment” that led to him to the idea of “trapdoors” in a museum. Trapdoors, also known as “Easter eggs,” are when a film or game has a reference that insiders will understand but the general public may not. This idea then morphed into the idea of “ideological accessibility” in a museum, or the idea that an exhibit can and should mean different things to different people.

“Through my research with the visitors, staff, and collaborators for the exhibit, I was able to reach a new level of understanding about how people work together, how they tell stories about themselves, and how they understand—and celebrate—differences in the ways that they think about the world,” LaMaskin said in his prepared graduation remarks.

LaMaskin plans to take the next year off before possibly heading to graduate school, either to continue his study of anthropology or to take his work in a slightly different direction: food studies.

“I’m curious how my training in anthropology connects back to sort of how we’re understanding native and natural foods,” LaMaskin says. Adding, “How do we perceive these native foods? How do we use them? Are there native recipes perhaps that can be looked into?”

LaMaskin is also thinking about possibly pursuing a career in user-experience research, or how people use technological products and how best to optimize that use.

“Aaron is an outstanding student, and the is the best kind of ambassador for the discipline of anthropology: conscientious, a critical and creative thinker, sincere, generous, respectful to others, with a desire to understand the world from other perspectives and honor them through clear and insightful reflection and communication,” LaMaskin’s nominator said in his nomination letter.

“He is a remarkable young scholar with a brilliant career ahead of him.”

During normal times, the College of Arts and Sciences outstanding graduate is invited to speak at the honors ceremony. With commencement this year being virtual, LaMaskin will be speaking remotely and is invited back next year.

Aaron LaMaskin, the college’s spring 2020 outstanding grad, documented the curation process of a groundbreaking exhibition in Santa Fe

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Car crash helps grad make moral case for religious inclusion

Anonymous — Tue, 08 May 2018 20:16:24 +0000

Car crash helps grad make moral case for religious inclusion Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/08/2018 - 14:16

Clint Talbott

Toby Bollig, the spring 2018 outstanding graduate in the College of Arts and Sciences, had a personal experience with the issue after serious car crash left him with a brain injury that made attending church ‘miserable’

Toby Bollig is as comfortable in the humanities as he is in the natural sciences, as his academic record at the University of Colorado Boulder effectively proves. Additionally, Bollig overcame a traumatic brain injury in a 2016 car accident and used that experience as a jumping-off point for one of his two honors theses.

Bollig will graduate Thursday as a double major in philosophy and in physics summa cum laude. He completed an honors thesis in each of those disciplines.

At the top of the page, Toby Bollig poses for a photo in 2014. Photo by Jamie Leigh Siebert. Above, Bollig in a contemplative moment this spring next to the Robert Frost statue outside of Old Main on campus. Staff photo.

While at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, he worked in several jobs and amassed an impressive list of campus leadership experience, including co-chair of the Chancellor’s Accessibility Committee. He is one of 10 students from this graduating class in the College of Arts and Sciences to earn nothing but As.

Those are some reasons Bollig has been named the college’s outstanding graduate for spring 2018.

Bollig is a fourth-generation Colorado native, born and reared in Fort Collins and the son of a Colorado State University alumnus. Partly because of ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s good reputation in physics, “I moseyed my way down here to Boulder,” he said last week, adding:

“I bleed silver and gold now.”

In his honors thesis in physics, Bollig examined the scientific revolution in the development of the Rutherford-Bohr model of the atom.

Bollig argues for a revision in a theory of scientific revolution proposed by Thomas Kuhn, a 20th-century American physicist and author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

“One of my basic philosophical commitments is to metaphysical realism,” Bollig said last week. “Science, though not perfect—it’s fallible—does give us information about reality and knowledge about reality. It’s a reasonable aim of science to do that, and that knowledge is mind-independent and kind of in a shared common space.”

This perspective also infuses his philosophy honors thesis—which focused on the religious exemptions to the Americans with Disabilities Act—or ADA. He examined Christian metaethical accounts of human rights and specifically disability rights.

“I think moral facts do exist,” Bollig said. “I think we can at least if not have perfect knowledge then have some knowledge of them. And they’re mind-independent as well, for me.”

It seemed very problematic to me that someone with a brain injury would be more able to go to a food truck collective in a bar than to attend a church or religious service.”

Bollig’s own life raised this question. In fall 2016, he was driving home to see his parents, turning left on a protected green arrow from Highway 52 onto I-25. A guy who had dropped an avocado while driving was trying to grab the fruit and ran the red light, smashing into Bollig’s car.

Initially, doctors thought he’d be fine within a week. Two weeks after, he interviewed for the Rhodes Scholarship, and his traumatic brain injury made it a “miserable experience.” That’s because stimulation from light and noise can leave the injured person exhausted and suffering from headaches.

He saw a neurologist, who diagnosed a concussion after doing “baseline cognitive testing,” which showed Bollig’s cognitive abilities in the single-digits percentile range and some less than the first percentile. “The average college student, they would expect to be in the 90th percentile or higher.”

Bollig took a medical leave from ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ and moved in with his parents. For eight months, he was not able to live independently.

During this time, Bollig’s best friend, Floyd Pierce (ApMath, Econ’17), appeared on the CBS series The Amazing Race, and held a premiere party at a Boulder bar. To reduce the stimulation of the place, he wore tinted glasses and ear plugs, “and it was fine.”

Within a week of Pierce’s party, Bollig’s parents wanted him to go to church with them for Easter. “That experience was miserable,” Bollig recalled. “It was 10 times harder than going to that premiere party.”

He added: “My brain was so compromised by the flashing lights and the loud noises and all of objects in my visual field that I didn’t even realize that I could get up and leave the service to get away from the stimulation causing my symptoms to escalate.”

Noting that Title III of the ADA exempts religious organizations from the requirement to provide equal access to facilities for people with disabilities, Bollig said, “It seemed very problematic to me that someone with a brain injury would be more able to go to a food truck collective in a bar than to attend a church or religious service.”

In his honors thesis, Bollig examines the work of theologians who argue against the concept of human rights, broadly speaking, “which they think are inextricably tied to the excessive individualism of the Enlightenment.”

Bollig’s thesis proposes two ways to “include people with disabilities in a robust, theistic account of human rights.” Even though the ADA exempts religious facilities, Bollig hopes religious institutions find his moral arguments at more compelling than federal law.

And he has made some headway. Bollig’s church in Louisville has been “very receptive to talking about and working on becoming more accessible to and inclusive of people with disabilities,” he said.

The church is building a new facility asked and asked Bollig for suggestions on incorporating accessibility into the work. Before his thesis was completed, Bollig discussed ways the church could work with its building contractor “including voluntarily building their new space in compliance with Title III of the ADA.”

After graduation, Bollig plans to take a few months to recover from neck surgery that is related to the car crash. During that time, he hopes to land a job working with a law firm that practices disability law.

Later, he hopes to get a doctorate in philosophy and go to law school. In the long term, he’d like to be a professor working at the intersection of “theology, philosophy and law to address disability issues” and also human rights.

Toby Bollig, the spring 2018 outstanding graduate in the College of Arts and Sciences, took up accessibility in religious institutions after a serious car crash left him with a brain injury that made attending church "miserable."

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Finding his voice, performer also finds a career

Anonymous — Fri, 05 May 2017 18:31:54 +0000

Finding his voice, performer also finds a career Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/05/2017 - 12:31

Clint Talbott

The disciplines of theatre and speech-pathology approach the same issue from different vantage points, outstanding graduate says

When William Kristofer Buxton was in middle school, vocal nodules left him with “essentially no voice.” Instead of surgery, Buxton did two years of speech therapy, and gradually his voice returned.

“Once it came back, I realized I couldn’t keep taking it for granted,” he said. So he tried out for the school musical.

Buxton, an Arvada resident and fourth-generation University of Colorado Boulder student, graduates next week summa cum laude with a bachelor of fine arts in theatre performance and a bachelor of arts in speech, language and hearing sciences.

He is the spring 2017 outstanding graduate in the College of Arts and Sciences. He has clearly found his voice.

For his honors thesis, Buxton directed a ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ production of Distracted, a play by Lisa Loomer about a boy diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Characters in the play also have depression and anxiety, bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder.

William Kristofer Buxton kneels on stage during a 2016 performance of Return to the Forbidden Planet.

“In its analysis of each disorder, the play fundamentally challenges the audience to re-evaluate their understanding of mental disorders in the context of a technological, contemporary world,” Buxton wrote in his honors-thesis proposal.

Buxton’s Distracted produced six sold-out shows in October 2016.

As director, Buxton cast the actors, designed the set, conducted background research on ADHD, analyzed the play, made artistic choices, designed and produced marketing material and organized read-throughs and rehearsals.

In short, he performed the roles of a leader, manager and boss—skills not necessarily associated with a degree in theatre and dance, noted Dean Steven R. Leigh, who praised the breadth of Buxton’s liberal-arts education.

Theodore Stark, a senior instructor in theatre and dance, echoed that praise, calling Buxton the “ideal liberal-arts student.”

Buxton’s fusion of the arts and sciences made sense. After enrolling at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, Buxton pursued his degree in theatre and dance. To fulfill a core-curriculum requirement, he took a course in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences

Taking that course convinced him to pursue speech pathology as a second major, partly because the discipline helped him when he was in middle school:

“That was such a crucial time for me. For me to discover my voice again and start performing was huge, and so I wanted to share that with other people,” Buxton said. “I decided I wanted to start pursuing a speech-pathology path. It was sort of the process of me discovering my voice and wanting to help others discover theirs.”

In Buxton’s view, the disciplines of theatre and speech-pathology approach the same issue from different vantage points. “Theatre is applying the concept of voice and actually having the experience of having voice, whereas speech pathology is taking a scientific approach to that idea of having voice.”

Besides taking the director’s chair for his honors thesis, Buxton has performed in 11 theatre department productions and four productions of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. In last summer’s Comedy of Errors, Buxton played a mime, a role that, he notes, is ironic.

“After finding my voice, I was playing the mime.”

This summer, Buxton will join the CSF’s cast in Hamlet, playing the role of Osric, memorably performed by the late Robin Williams in Kenneth Branagh’s film version of the great play.

After graduation and a summer of Shakespeare, Buxton plans to spend the next year doing auditions and applying to graduate school. His plan is to earn an advanced degree in speech pathology and continue working on the stage.

“I feel torn between the two worlds,” he said of theatre and speech pathology. “For me, it’s going to be about finding how to combine them.”

When William Kristofer Buxton was in middle school, vocal nodules left him with “essentially no voice.” Now he's earning degrees in theatre and speech pathology, and he aims to pursue both paths in his career.

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Outstanding grad challenges one-dimensional images of women

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Dec 2016 21:54:45 +0000

Outstanding grad challenges one-dimensional images of women Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 12/14/2016 - 14:54

Clint Talbott

When she was a child, Maiji Castro’s father was in the U.S. Air Force, stationed in Japan, Korea and Italy. There, she found fine art museums and her life’s calling.

Maiji Castro

“I knew I wanted to work in a museum,” Castro said. She is well on her way.

Castro, who graduates summa cum laude with a degree in art history and a minor in Italian, has been named the fall 2016 outstanding graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Hers is one of 1,574 degrees that ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ will be awarding during at the midpoint of the academic year.

In her honors thesis, Castro examined the 19^th century paintings of bathers by Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt. Castro contends that Degas and Cassatt were among the first artists who challenged the eroticism of the nude by “examining modern connections between class, privacy and cleanliness.”

Both Degas and Cassatt were hampered in their efforts to do this, he by his gender and she by her position as an upper-middle-class woman, Castro argues. Further, she notes that the effort to break free from traditional eroticized nudes is continuing today:

“It is a continuing debate as to whether artists, society and the contemporary female nude will ever be free of the desire and eroticism established by the classical idealized form,” Castro writes.

Women should no longer be viewed as erotic objects solely for the male gaze but as whole complete people who have professions, and families and possess the power to choose.”

In remarks prepared for a gathering of graduating honors students, Castro notes that artists have long depicted women primarily as beautiful, perfect objects to be desired: “Women were reduced to the nude Venus emerging from the frothy sea by Botticelli, to the provocative odalisque lounging on silk sheets by Ingres, to goddesses facing the judgment of Paris, and to Susanna being blamed for the uncontrolled lechery of the Elders.”

These are stereotypes that all people, “men and women alike, should be campaigning to free ourselves from,” Castro states, adding that women’s access to social media today helps women control the narrative told about their own lives.

In her honors thesis, Castro examined the 19th century paintings of bathers by Mary Cassatt.

She concludes, “Women should no longer be viewed as erotic objects solely for the male gaze but as whole complete people who have professions, and families and possess the power to choose.”

Castro cited two of her favorite contemporary female artists who are working toward this end: Tomoko Sawada and Amanda Charchian.

Sawada, a Japanese photographer and performance artist, photographs herself to comment on women’s self-identity and how women are judged on their appearances. Charchian, a Los Angeles-based photographer and mixed-media artist, is known for taking pictures of nude women artists in mystical landscapes to empower the female nude.

While a ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ student, Castro completed a study-abroad program at the Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy, and she earned her certificate in applied business from the CU Leeds School of Business.

After graduation, Castro will be finishing the application process for graduate school. She is applying to Georgetown University, New York University, the City College of New York, and the University of Denver. Meantime, she will also continue working at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.

If she could choose her career, she’d direct the New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. “If I’m going to have a dream job, I want it to be grandiose,” she said.

Maiji Castro, who graduates summa cum laude with a degree in art history and a minor in Italian, has been named the fall 2016 outstanding graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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Obstacles don’t deter standout grad’s cancer‐drug research

Anonymous — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 07:00:00 +0000

Obstacles don’t deter standout grad’s cancer‐drug research Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/17/2016 - 00:00

Clint Talbott

Alla “Ally” Balabanova describes her time at the University of Colorado Boulder as “anything but easy,” adding that she faced obstacles “just about every step of the way,” starting with her initial uncertainty about what to study. That might not sound like a ringing endorsement, but it is.

Balabanova graduated summa cum laude in biochemistry and was the Fall 2015 outstanding graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences. The obstacles to which she refers centered around her choosing a major and gaining her stride in the world of laboratory research.

Alla Balabanova

Research, she observes, is “like swimming in a large mass of uncharted waters; you’re clueless about what direction to take next, and very likely, you’ll choose a wrong approach.”

“Ideas that look good on paper don’t always work out in reality, and it becomes discouraging. Yet when the results are finally achieved, it makes the entire struggle worthwhile.”

Balabanova’s honors thesis was based on her research on a cancer-fighting drug that is designed to kill cancer cells while minimally affecting healthy cells. Working in the laboratories of Hubert Yin and Tad Koch, professors in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, she employed a “wide range of advanced methods, from chemical synthesis to spectroscopy to live cell biology,” her honors committee wrote.

Balabanova has long wanted to pursue a career in the medical field, and she has considered going into pharmacy or medical school. In her sophomore year at CU-Boulder, she took an organic-chemistry course from Yin. She loved it and “pretty much aced all the tests.”

At the end of that semester, Yin suggested that Balabanova work in a lab. When she asked him to recommend her to a CU-Boulder biochemistry lab, Yin invited her to join his own lab. Given his stature, that was something of a coup. Yin’s graduate student Ryo Tamura served as her mentor.

Koch, her thesis adviser, explains that Balabanova’s research project was both challenging and cutting edge.

I am certain that Ally will achieve greatness in whatever she undertakes.”

“Her project involved the synthesis and biological evaluation of a new cancer chemotherapeutic being developed in our group, targeted to cancer cells using methodology being developed in Hubert’s group, and activated photochemically by methodology being developed in the group of Anna Moore at Harvard Medical School,” Koch notes.

“Ally was amazing in her project as well as her studies at CU. She and her family clearly demonstrate the importance of immigrants to our country,” Koch says

Balabanova’s family lives in Centennial, Colo., but came to the United States from Moldova, the former Soviet republic, in 1998, when she was 6. She is fluent in both English and Russian, and as a student, she worked as a translator of Russian for the National Snow and Ice Data Center at CU-Boulder.

Balabanova has opted to take a year off between undergraduate and medical school. She’s decided to become a physician—perhaps a pediatrician. She decided against becoming a pharmacist, having concluded that being a physician would give her more interactions with patients.

Balabanova has applied to CU’s medical school and to medical schools at the University of California, San Francisco, and UCLA.

Her thesis adviser believes Ally will go far. “I am certain that Ally will achieve greatness in whatever she undertakes,” Koch says.

Clint Talbott is director of communications and external relations for the College of Arts and Sciences and editor of the College of Arts and Sciences Magazine.

Alla Balabanova describes her time at CU‐Boulder as “anything but easy,” adding that she faced obstacles “just about every step of the way,” starting with her
initial uncertainty about what to study. That might not sound like a ringing endorsement, but it is. Balabanova graduated summa cum laude in biochemistry and was the Fall 2015 outstanding graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences.

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