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UN I V E R S I T Y O F D E N V E R 0 6 . 2 0 0 9
Inside
• Korbel ranking
• Budding scientists
• Groff goes to D.C.
• French bistro
• Energy sleuths
• Mathematical art
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University of Denver graduate Don Tousaint smiles at his family during to read, download or
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Community News, 2199
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Commencement coverage at www.du.edu/today. change.
DU law professor Erik Bluemel dies in
bicycle accident Relay
DU’s Sturm College of Law community
for life
is mourning the loss of Assistant Professor Erik
Bluemel, who died May 6 from injuries suffered in
a bicycle accident.
More than 270
Bluemel came to DU last fall for the 2008–09 students and other community
academic year. He taught courses in administrative,
environmental and indigenous peoples law. members raised just over $20,000
His research interests included environmental
federalism, climate governance, international for the American Cancer Society
administrative law, and environmental rights.
Bluemel held a law degree from New York in DU’s fifth annual Relay for
University, a master’s of law from Georgetown
University Law Center, and a bachelor’s degree in
Life event May 8–9. During the
political economy from the University of California-
Berkeley. Before coming to DU, he clerked for
12-hour event, participants walked
Judge Barefoot Sanders in the Northern District of to celebrate cancer survivors
Texas and Judge Kermit Edward Bye in the Eighth
Circuit Court of Appeals. He also served as a and honor those the disease has
staff attorney and teaching fellow at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Public
Representation. claimed. Every year, more than 3.5
“We have all lost a wonderful colleague, teacher and friend,” says Law Dean José (Beto)
Juárez Jr. “I know that the College of Law community will continue to show their support for million people participate in Relay
Erik’s family as we go through this unimaginable period. Please keep Erik’s family in your thoughts
and prayers. Erik’s family and parents have drawn from the great support and love of the College
for Life events across the country.
of Law community.”
The Denver Police Department reports that Bluemel was involved in a bicycle accident
shortly after midnight on Tuesday, May 5, along 15th Street in Denver’s Lower Downtown
[ ]
district. A memorial service for Bluemel was held May 30 in Arcadia, Calif. Donations in his UN I V E R S I T Y O F D E N V E R
Farer. “Moreover, I am convinced that in terms of the intrinsic quality of the professional education
we provide, an education intensely responsive to individual needs and passions, and in terms of
the competitiveness of our graduates, we have few equals.” Contact Community News at 303-871-4312
The biennial survey was conducted by researchers at the College of William and Mary in or tips@du.edu
Williamsburg, Va.
—Laura Hathaway Printed on 10% PCW recycled paper
2
Blockbuster roles
Wayne Armstrong
credits, signals Noodles
and Company’s DU
neighborhood debut
Broomfield-based Noodles & Com-
pany is preparing to open a new restau-
rant in an East Evans Avenue location
previously occupied by a Blockbuster
video store.
Blockbuster stopped renting DVDs
and other items on April 20. The
departure clears the way for Noodles
to finalize lease arrangements and to see
about renovations to the property.
“We’re moving forward with it,” says
Matt Wagner, communications manager
for Noodles. “As far as I know, we are
looking at an opening date somewhere
between the middle of September to the
middle of November.”
The move would be part of a flurry
of Noodles restaurant openings, some 20
of which are expected to begin operations
in 2009, Wagner said. Presently, the
chain has 36 stores in Colorado and 207 Professor Buck Sanford and students measure tree buds as part of Project Budburst, a real-life probe into
global warming.
nationwide.
“This is one of our most anticipated
sites for 2009. And we’re not looking to When homework isn’t homework, it’s research
slow down in 2010,” Wagner says. “We’re
one of the shining stars of these unique When first-year DU science students signed up for Professor Buck Sanford’s newest class, they
economic times.” really signed up for something bigger: a real-life probe into global warming.
Among reasons for the company’s For their class lab work, students measured tree buds as leaves emerged this spring. Then they
success was sewing up credit before the uploaded weekly findings into global databases being assembled for scientists to study today and for
recession hit, Wagner says. decades into the future.
The new Noodles restaurant at “These measurements really do matter,” Sanford warned his students as they prepared for
1737 E. Evans Ave. will be similar to the their first day of data collection. “The data you collect will be studied by a global community of
company’s other stores, Wagner says. scientists, a community that you are now part of.”
The restaurant boasts “fresh, wholesome, Sanford says scientists around the world are studying records of bud development to see if
balanced, fast” Asian, American and global warming is affecting how early tree leaves emerge. With an army of 180 students taking
Mediterranean dishes for about six or his labs in the spring quarter, and DU’s collection of trees in the campus-wide arboretum, the
seven dollars. University has an opportunity to deliver a valuable snapshot of activity in Denver every spring.
Also on the drawing board is a 15–20 Every tree on campus is tagged with a number, so students in future generations can find the
person outdoor patio on the east side of exact same tree today’s students are studying. Each student selected a bud on a tree and tagged the
the building. The patio has been in place area so the same bud could be revisited. Then, for the next five weeks, students measured their
since the location operated as Chesapeake selected bud three times a week and charted its growth as a leaf emerged and started to grow.
Bagel in 1996, but permission to use Students joined in a campaign called Project BudBurst, which gathers data in a scientific field
it ended when the bagel store left. On called phenology — the study of the influence of climate on annual natural events, such as plant
April 7, the Denver Board of Adjustment budding and bird migration. They registered on a Web site and uploaded their data, which was then
granted a variance to property owner made available to scientists around the world. Sanford says some of the earliest reliable records
Robert Wiss for an awning, lighting and of plant cycles dates back to 700 AD, data carefully collected year after year for centuries on the
seating appropriate to outdoor dining. Japanese cherry tree cycles.
The approval removed an obstacle to Sanford says his class didn’t push any one theory of global warming. Rather, it tested the
Noodles leasing the premises. hypothesis that something is altering the life cycle of plants around the world.
—Richard Chapman —Chase Squires
3
Groff takes on job in Obama administration
Peter Groff’s final days as president of the Colorado state senate were spent working on a flurry
of last-minute bills and preparing for his move to Washington, D.C.
At the same time, the executive director of DU’s Center for New Politics and Policy — formerly
the Center for African American Policy — also wrapped up his teaching commitments in the University’s
Institute for Public Policy Studies.
On April 10, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan appointed Groff director of
faith-based and community initiatives in the U.S. Department of Education. He began work May 11,
just five days after the end of the annual four-month gathering of state legislators.
“I came to DU 12 years ago not really knowing what Chancellor Ritchie had in mind, but the
center really evolved over time,” says Groff. “I’ll really miss the classroom because I enjoyed the
interaction with students.”
The center’s evolution included the launch of the BlackPolicy.org Web site.
In addition, Groff and center co-director Charles Ellison — based in Washington, D.C. — began the
Groff/Ellison political report. The two also collaborate on a political radio series on Sirius/XM satellite
radio.
The Center for New Politics and Policy will be suspended until Groff returns from Washington,
D.C., although he readily admits he doesn’t know when that will be. “I’ll be there at least three-and-
a-half years,” says Groff noting that the timing coincides with the end of the president’s first term.
In the Department of Education, Groff will help empower faith-based and community groups,
enlisting them in support of the department’s mission to ensure equal access to education and to promote educational excellence.
Groff moved to Washington immediately after the state legislature ended its work.
Groff was appointed Colorado’s sixth African-American state senator in February 2003 and was elected to a full term on Nov. 2, 2004. In
January 2005, he was elected the body’s first African-American president pro tem. He was the third African-American in the nation’s history to
hold the post of state senate president. Groff began his career in state politics after being elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in
2000.
—Jim Berscheidt
4
Voila Vert!
Alums go together like wine and cheese in new Wash Park bistro
5
Energy efficiency
Campus energy sleuths shed light on saving power
W hen it comes to sleuthing out clever ways to save electricity in a giant building, Allen Wilson is every bit the detective Sam Spade is.
Maybe better.
Spade, the hero of Dashiell Hammett’s famous novel The Maltese Falcon, unraveled the riddle of the black bird. Wilson unraveled the
lighting systems in Hamilton gym, Gates Fieldhouse and Joy Burns Arena and saved the University more than $121,000 a year in power
costs.
Wilson, director of building services, also helped dent power costs at Ritchie by replacing the base beneath the Joy Burns ice arena with
concrete, which takes less power to freeze. He also refitted the arena’s lights with
energy-efficient bulbs.
Now he’s working on a way to rig Magness Arena so its high-wattage bulbs
won’t have to remain lit while crews are cleaning the arena or converting it to
other uses. It’s one more way to save money and reduce carbon emissions.
It isn’t always easy.
The Ritchie Center, for example, is a 440,000-square-foot recreation and
sports showcase that’s also DU’s third-biggest energy gobbler. Keeping it humming
costs around $1.1 million a year.
“You’ve got two sheets of ice and 750,000 gallons of water heated to 81
degrees in the pool,” Wilson says. “Everything we do is just trying to reduce the
consumption already programmed into the building.”
So every bit of energy savings counts. Take Hamilton Gymnasium, for
example. Until the lighting was refitted, the facility was illuminated by 116
individual 1,000-watt metal halides bouncing light off the ceiling about 20 hours
a day.
The hot lights blazed even when the gym wasn’t in use, in part because halide
lights take about 30 minutes to cool down before they can be turned back on.
So Wilson and campus energy director Tom McGee figured out how to get the
same illumination from fixtures with high-efficiency T5 fluorescent lights. The
fluorescents had plenty of light for athletics and TV broadcasts, used less power,
and turned on and off with a flick. They also set the lights at half-strength for all
uses except games and installed infrared motion detectors. If there’s no activity
on a court for 10 minutes, the lights turn off. Walk onto the court and the lights
return, no power-up required.
iStockphoto
“We halved [energy use] on the initial install,” Wilson says, “then we halved it
again because we’re running only half-light most of the time.”
The old halide bulbs also generated heat. When they went away so did the
heat, meaning the building’s cooling system didn’t have to work as hard.
Completion of DU’s new soccer stadium, conditioning complex and art annex will add to the mechanical load, Wilson and McGee
concede. And the art annex has a good amount of interior air space that will need to be heated and cooled.
That keeps Wilson at the drawing board, seeking out new ways to conserve power. Cutting back temperatures at night or zoning areas
of buildings might work, he suggests. Or maybe a geothermal system, which pumps heat from the earth into buildings in winter and heat
from the buildings into the ground in summer.
“Geothermal has some merit,” he says, “but it takes a lot of space.”
Solar is hot right now, he adds, but it won’t catch on until the systems can provide enough benefit to justify their cost, especially for
tax-exempt entities like DU.
Wind is nifty, McGee says, but fickle.
Which leaves the energy detectives quietly hunting for ways to save watts by asking a lot of questions. Magness Arena and El Pomar
pool are the next targets.
“The answer for our campus,” Wilson points out, “is to do a little bit of a lot of things.”
—Richard Chapman
6
Mathematical art
It all adds up to art for DU math professor
S ometimes a mathematical formula can be so perfect, so elegant, those who understand it might call
it art. Other times, a mathematical formula actually creates art.
DU mathematics professor Stan Gudder (pictured) has seen the beauty in math since the 1960s,
plugging instructions and formulas into graphics programs to create artwork of startling beauty. His
work reflects an otherworldly blend of bright colors, angular lines and perfect arches and curves — all
created by variables plugged into complex instructions.
“I really can’t draw, but it is art,” Gudder says. “Instead of a brush, I use a computer.”
While he doesn’t call himself an artist, his work says otherwise. A gallery in his Denver home is filled
with mind-bending images, and it’s hard to imagine each started with a series of numbers and xs and ys
that a computer interprets.
“I’m usually surprised at what I see once we put all those into the computer,” he says. “Sometimes, I
don’t like it. But I’m always interested.”
Gudder got his artistic start in the 1960s, when his work required stacks of punch cards to enter a
program that instructed a room-sized computer to move a stylus to create images. Today, he uses a large, commercial printer hooked to a
home computer in his basement gallery. It’s been a lifelong passion, even leading him to pen a book on the topic in the 1970s.
Gudder’s first-year seminar class, Mathematical Art, shows
students how mathematical instructions that start out as
“Shadowplot 3D (Sin [x2] Cos [y2] , (x, -2, 2) …” create a strange,
brightly colored image on a computer screen.
First-year communications major Jamie D’Angelo of Denver
seems a quick study, manipulating Gudder’s equations on her
computer screen, deftly creating new images by tweaking variables
and substituting values into formulas.
“It’s not exactly what I had thought it would be,” D’Angelo says.
“But I’m remembering a lot of math that I haven’t done in years, and
that’s a good thing.” Gudder, who offers the seminar to non-math
majors, says the trick is to teach a math course without making it
seem like a math course.
Gary Greenfield, a professor of computer science and
mathematics at the University of Richmond, edits the Journal of
Mathematics and the Arts. He says the combination of math and art
is a complicated marriage viewed differently by artists. As he points
out, some use mathematics to create art, and some find artistic
inspiration in mathematics. It’s all about finding a creative outlet.
“Regardless of how you categorize it, or which kinds of art or
artists are included,” Greenfield says, “in my opinion the reason
the imagery exhibited often has such widespread public appeal —
even though it is often disdained or ignored by the established art
culture — is because we humans are instinctively drawn to order,
symmetry, regularity, geometry, pattern, etc.”
“We see mathematics all around us, even in nature,” Gudder
says. “Perhaps that’s why some of my art looks like it reflects a
natural scene. You just have to look for it.”
—Chase Squires
7
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