education

As a new space race takes shape, a CU �鶹ӰԺ class asks: Do we understand China?

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:16:14 +0000

As a new space race takes shape, a CU �鶹ӰԺ class asks: Do we understand China? Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/29/2026 - 11:16

'China's Space Dream,' ASIA 4100, brings aerospace engineers, Chinese language students and international affairs majors into one room—and a visiting journalist from the South China Morning Post into the conversation

Days after Artemis II splashed down in the Pacific, returning four astronauts from the first crewed voyage beyond low Earth orbit in more than half a century, a science journalist who has spent years reporting on China's space program from inside its scientific institutions sat down with a CU �鶹ӰԺ classroom full of students who had been tracking the same story from the outside.

The conversation that followed put the American triumph in a wider frame. When the International Space Station was being designed in the 1990s, China had little to offer a partnership even if one had been on the table. Three decades later, the country operates its own permanently crewed space station, has returned the first-ever samples from the far side of the Moon, and is on track to bring back the first Martian soil before the United States does. The students, aerospace engineering majors sitting next to Chinese language and civilizations majors, history students alongside international affairs specialists, already knew these facts. What they wanted from Ling Xin was something harder to find out, what does this moment look like from the other side of the space race?

ASIA 4100, “China’s Space Dream: Long March to the Moon and Beyond,” is a course developed through the support of CU �鶹ӰԺ’s interdisciplinary Space Minor and taught by Lauren Collins, a teaching assistant professor and director of the Asian Studies program in the Center for Asian Studies. Now in its second iteration, the class will be offered again in spring 2027.

Collins designed the course around an observation that kept surfacing in her own work. US-China space competition is one of the defining dynamics of a shifting world order, but the people who understand the engineering often lack the cultural and historical context, and the people who study China often aren’t following the technical developments.

Four astronauts aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft atop the SLS (Space Launch System) rocket launch on the agency’s Artemis II test flight, Wednesday, April 1, from Launch Complex 39B at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Photo: NASA)

“The mix in the classroom is the whole point,” Collins said. “Aerospace and astronomy students know something about orbital mechanics and mission design. Chinese language and civilizations students know something about political culture and history. International affairs students understand geopolitics. But the interconnectedness across all of those domains is what surprises everyone, including me.”

The course weaves together Chinese culture, history, geopolitical contexts, and the race to the Moon as it unfolds in real time. Students study the origins of China’s space program, the role of the “space dream” in Chinese national identity, the Wolf Amendment that bars NASA from bilateral cooperation with China, the military dimensions of space technology, and the case for collaboration.

“Warfare and military applications are clearly an issue,” Collins said. “But the need to collaborate is so key, too. We’re talking about planetary challenges that affect all of us like climate monitoring, asteroid deflection, space debris, deep-space science. These issues don’t respect national borders.”

Learning from a visiting journalist

Ling Xin’s visit to the class came through the Conference on World Affairs classroom visit program, which pairs CWA speakers with CU �鶹ӰԺ courses during conference week. The 78th annual CWA, running April 13–16, featured more than 60 speakers across 50 panels at the Limelight Hotel �鶹ӰԺ and across campus.

For Collins, the match was ideal. Ling Xin is one of a small number of journalists working in English who can draw on firsthand access to Chinese scientific institutions, fluency in Mandarin, and formal journalism training in the United States. A former writer for the Chinese Academy of Sciences, she holds a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University and has published in Science, Scientific American, Nature, and MIT Technology Review. She has reported extensively on China’s Chang’e lunar missions, the Tiangong space station, and the movement of Chinese scientists between US and Chinese institutions, a phenomenon known as the “reverse brain drain”.

“Having a journalist like Ling Xin in the classroom is a different experience from reading an article,” Collins said. “She can tell students what Chinese space scientists actually say when a reporter asks them about the competition with NASA”.

The timing of the visit was perfect. Artemis II had splashed down on April 10 after a successful nine-day circumlunar flight, making astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency mission specialist Jeremy Hansen the first humans to fly past the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Koch became the first woman to travel beyond low Earth orbit. The mission was a triumph (and a relief) after many delays.

But even as the Artemis II crew was being celebrated, the competitive landscape was shifting beneath the surface. NASA announced in February that the first crewed lunar landing has been pushed from Artemis III to Artemis IV, now targeted for 2028. The Lunar Gateway station was cancelled. And Congress effectively killed NASA’s Mars Sample Return program in the FY2026 spending bill, leaving nearly 30 carefully collected sample tubes sitting in Mars’s Jezero Crater with no funded plan to bring them home.

"Let's Go to the Moon!" by Yuko Shimizu

Accelerating push to space

China, meanwhile, is accelerating. Its Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission is targeted for launch in 2028, with samples expected back on Earth around 2031. If NASA doesn’t revive its own program, China will likely become the first nation to return Martian soil, a milestone with enormous scientific and symbolic weight. These debates are a key substance of class discussion.

“When you put an aerospace engineering student and a Chinese civilizations student in the same conversation about whether or not space should be treated as a global commons, you get an analysis that neither of them could produce alone,” Collins said. “Knowledge is co-created.”

The Wolf Amendment, a congressional provision renewed annually since 2011 that bars NASA from bilateral activities with Chinese space agencies, is a recurring thread in the course. The policy, which effectively excluded China from the International Space Station partnership, is widely credited with accelerating China’s independent development of the Tiangong station, the Long March 5 rocket family, and the full suite of crewed spaceflight technology that now positions the country as NASA’s primary competitor.

In 2026 alone, China plans to launch two crewed missions to Tiangong, including its first year-long stay, and host a Pakistani astronaut, the station’s first international crew member. The Chang’e-7 lunar probe, targeting the Moon’s south pole to search for water ice, is scheduled to launch later this year. A crewed lunar landing is targeted before 2030.

Collins also brings science fiction into the classroom to explore the cultural dimensions of space ambition. The global success of Liu Cixin’s “Three-Body Problem” trilogy has made Chinese science fiction a shared cultural reference point that crosses national and disciplinary boundaries. “Science fiction adds a layer that unites all of us,” Collins said. “These are universal concerns about what technology is doing to human civilization, especially now in the age of AI.”

The course is one of several electives offered through CU �鶹ӰԺ’s Space Minor, a campus-wide program open to students regardless of major that provides an interdisciplinary foundation in all aspects of space. The minor, part of CU �鶹ӰԺ’s Grand Challenge initiative, requires five courses: the foundational “Pathway to Space” and four electives drawn from departments across the university, ranging from aerospace engineering to music to environmental design.

CU �鶹ӰԺ has a singular claim on the subject. The university is the only academic institution in the world to have sent instruments to every planet in the solar system and Pluto, and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics has been a leader in space research since 1948.

“This university has extraordinary depth in the technical side of space,” Collins said. “What the Space Minor makes possible is courses like mine that bring the human dimensions like culture, history, geopolitics, and collaboration into the same conversation. That’s what students will need to navigate a world where the US and China are building competing lunar bases and competing for leadership in the space economy.”

ASIA 4100, “China’s Space Dream: Long March to the Moon and Beyond,” will next be offered in spring 2027. The course is open to all CU �鶹ӰԺ students and counts toward the Space Minor.

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Top illustration: A Chinese flag added to famed photo of astronaut James Irwin on the moon. (Original photo: NASA)

A century later, a liberating education is still our mission

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 20:59:36 +0000

A century later, a liberating education is still our mission Rachel Sauer Mon, 04/20/2026 - 14:59

Daryl Maeda

A century ago, we needed informed citizens and clear thinkers; today, as the pace of change grows exponentially, we need them even more

Picture the scene when the Hellems Arts and Sciences building first opened as the hub of the humanities at the University of Colorado:

It was 1921, and the world was recovering from a deadly pandemic, Americans were isolationist, suspicious of immigration and deeply divided on issues of race. Also, economic uncertainty fueled doubts about the value of a traditional, liberal-arts education.

History might not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes.

This month, 105 years after Hellems opened, CU �鶹ӰԺ officials celebrated its recently completed renovation, heralding the place as a nucleus of campus life, a common bond among most students and, still, the home to key disciplines in the humanities.

Today, we’re in the wake of a pandemic, with rising isolationism and contentious debates on immigration, race and a liberal-arts education.

Let’s discuss, starting with a definition of the “liberal arts,” which is important, given modern connotations of the term “liberal.” The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that a good education—one that prepared citizens to steer the ship of state—was the foundation of democracy.

Cicero argued that autonomous individuals who earn the respect of others must learn skills or practices to be effective citizens and stewards of democracy. He called these skills the artes liberales, which translates to the “arts of free people,” those with liberty—hence “liberal arts.” Cicero focused on rhetoric, literature, poetry, ethics, civics, logic, geometry, music, astronomy and natural science.

History has a home in Hellems Arts and Sciences, as does philosophy, English, linguistics, the Anderson Language and Technology Center and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.

He described arts and sciences, essentially.

The fields we count as liberal arts have grown in the 2,000 years since then, but the gist—the idea citizens need all these skills to better participate in democracy and in life—is unchanged.

Today in the College of Arts and Sciences, the liberal arts—now with more subjects!—remain central to the education of all students. Across the nation, however, students and their families sometimes question the return on investment in a liberal-arts education.

As I’ve noted previously, it is true that those who earn degrees in engineering and business tend to command higher starting salaries than those who hold degrees in English or sociology. However, those with a liberal-arts degrees often enjoy mid-career earnings growth that can rival that of their friends in technical disciplines.

The monetary “return on investment” is compelling. But that’s not the only benefit, and this is not the first time we’ve had this debate.

George Norlin was president of CU �鶹ӰԺ in 1921, when Hellems opened. He, too, responded to critics of a liberal-arts education, including Henry Ford, who famously said, “History is more or less bunk.”

Norlin penned an essay in which he argued that knowing only the present day was a kind of “prison” that kept a person from fully participating in civic and personal life. At the time, a liberal-arts education was called a “liberal education,” and he said this:

“A liberal education, or what we might better call a liberating education, has for its purpose … ‘a breaking of prison walls which leaves us standing, of course, in the present but in a present so enlarged and enfranchised that it is become, not a prison, but a free world.’”

Norlin rejected the “war-cry of charlatans” who demand that universities neglect liberal education and “become places of apprenticeship for jobs.”

He added: “Let there be more schools for the training of artisans—the more the better—but let the colleges and universities remember that, whatever else they may be called upon to do, their first business is to keep civilization alive and moving from vitality to vitality in each generation.”

Norlin, after whom the university’s libraries are named, paraphrased Cicero in the inscription above the main library’s entrance: ‘Who knows only his own generation remains always a child.’”

Were we to update that statement today, we’d use gender-neutral language. But I hope, as Norlin did, that it will reflect the university’s core purpose as long as they remain etched in stone.

History has a home in Hellems Arts and Sciences, as does philosophy, English, linguistics, the Anderson Language and Technology Center and the Colorado Shakespeare Festival.

As he celebrated Hellems’ reopening this month, CU �鶹ӰԺ Chancellor Justin Schwartz hailed the place as “where the ideas of the university take root, where perspectives are challenged and where intellectual confidence begins to take shape.”

The scholars in Hellems grapple with profound questions and promote critical thinking. The questions explored there have never been more important:

How do we apply the lessons of yesterday as we stride toward tomorrow? How do we find common cause across cultures and languages? How do we reason thoughtfully about what is right, true and ethical?

These are the questions the world must address, and our investment in Hellems demonstrates that the university honors this prime imperative.

A century ago, we needed informed citizens and clear thinkers. Today, as the pace of change grows exponentially, we need them even more. Embracing the wisdom of the past can drive us toward a better future.

Daryl Maeda is dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the �鶹ӰԺ.

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A century ago, we needed informed citizens and clear thinkers; today, as the pace of change grows exponentially, we need them even more.

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Students create better ways to communicate science

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:58:11 +0000

Students create better ways to communicate science Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/10/2026 - 09:58

Rachel Sauer

In a program with Northglenn High School students, Institute for Behavioral Genetics researchers ask for creative and innovative ideas on how to talk about science

With all due respect to the dedicated and passionate scientists at the �鶹ӰԺ, but Northglenn High School students Joseph Zuniga and Alecsander Morain’s main goal was to “convert this study into a manageable format for normal people,” Morain explains.

The study in question was a recently published paper finding that children’s early interactions with music shape—but don’t determine—their musical lives decades later. The research, based on 40 years of data from surveys of 1,900 people in The Colorado Adoption/Twin Study of Lifespan Behavioral Development and Cognitive Aging (CATSLife), also considered shifting genetic and environmental influences.

Northglenn High School senior Carla Camacho holds the graphic novel that she and her fellow students created from an Institute for Behavioral Genetics study.

“It took quite a few readings to understand what the study was saying,” Zuniga says, and Morain adds, “and even then, we get to the results and there’s this graph that makes zero sense.”

Daniel Gustavson, first author of the study and a CU �鶹ӰԺ assistant research professor in the Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG), was standing fairly near as Zuniga and Morain expressed their honest opinions, but no hard feelings. That insight was why the two young men, along with more than 100 of their fellow Northglenn High School students, were gathered at the Sustainability, Energy and Environment Complex (SEEC) Thursday morning.

They were participating in a program envisioned and led by Analicia Howard, a psychology and neuroscience PhD student and Gustavson’s research colleague at the IBG. The program, which is funded by a Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship grant, is part of a broader research study called Comunidad, which is centered at IBG but has collaborators across campus and at Washington University.

“We were designing this study so that the community we’re most interested in, which is here in Colorado, is more involved in that development part of the study—that they are engaged in every aspect of research,” Howard explains, adding that a lot of effort in the first several years of community-based research like theirs should be focused on building partnerships.

“An issue with academia in general is there’s such a tough history with a lot of scientific research, especially if it includes human subjects in marginalized communities. So, we’re wanting to connect with the community in a way that’s mutually beneficial and leverage community partnerships in the future with established, trusted organizations. Schools felt like a natural segue to reaching broader audiences and meeting our goal of communicating science better. We were asking, ‘How do we communicate in a way that’s engaging, in a way that reaches the communities we’re interested in reaching?’”

They thought: Let’s ask the students.

Explaining science better

The idea is straightforward: select a handful of IBG research papers and ask students, working in groups, to choose one and create a project focused on how to better communicate the science to their broader community.

Howard and Gustavson approached Northglenn High School because CU Science Discovery and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research had previously worked with students and faculty there, “so there was already an established relationship and trust,” Howard says.

As a STEM high school, Northglenn requires every class to have an aspect of STEM, “but we were still thinking in terms of the accessibility of the science when we were choosing the papers, because the theme of genetics can be difficult to parse if you’re fairly new to it,” Gustavson says.

Meet the student award winners

Award for scientific accuracy

Ricardo Ayala
Brandon Diaz Renteria
Maddy Duncan
Alex Dunn
Caleb Ewudzi-Acquah

Award for innovation

Alex Trillo Salais
Will Watt
Joey Marquez
Angel Mendoza Maldonado
Frankie Pillar Cornell

Award for accessible presentation

Carla Camacho
Jane Heslop
Kimberly Olivas
Aylin Ramirez

The IBG scientists selected six of their papers that centered on topics that might be interesting to teenagers—video games, music, mental health—and presented them to Amy Murillo’s and Cheyenne Rost’s multicultural literature classes.

“Every year we incorporate a practice-based learning project into the curriculum, and we thought this was a real-world opportunity that the kids could grab onto,” Murillo says. “It’s been part of our research and analysis unit, so for the first few weeks we were talking about things like misinformation and fake news and why it’s important to read these studies.”

Then Murillo and Rost and about 120 students—all seniors except for one junior graduating early—arrayed across four classes spent a week reading a practice study.

“We were going through it step by step, learning how to read a scientific paper and trying to give them the autonomy to make mistakes and learn from them,” Rost says. “We were talking about things like how to understand results and how a layman would understand the jargon.”

Howard and Gustavson also visited the classes to answer questions once students had chosen the papers on which they’d focus their projects.

Thinking creatively about science

As for the projects, “we knew we had to make the paper simpler,” says Joselyn Ramirez, who along with classmate Genessis Garcia chose an IBG-led study finding that playing video games didn’t show consistent associations with impulsivity, but rather screentime in general is associated with impulsive tendencies in adulthood.

“There was a lot of stuff where I had to go back and go back and go back because I didn’t understand it,” Ramirez says, and Garcia adds that if they, as students at a STEM high school, had such difficulty understanding the study, what would it be like for a non-scientist community member to try reading it?

So they created interactive videos, which they showed on a screen they set up on their display table Thursday morning.

Joselyn Ramirez (left) and Genessis Garcia (right) with an interactive display board based on Institute for Behavioral Genetics research finding that playing video games doesn't show consistent associations with impulsivity.

Zuniga and Morain also thought to adapt the music research to a format Murillo and Rost teach their students—a recipe, with ingredients, steps and finished product. Students also were encouraged to think creatively and in multimedia terms as they designed their projects, so Zuniga and Morain created a survey on a poster board on which event attendees could mark the kind of instrument they’d like to play.

For Carla Camacho, Jane Heslop, Kimberly Olivas and Aylin Ramirez, thinking creatively about communicating the science meant writing, designing and drawing a graphic novel. They also chose the video games and impulsivity research and created a story about two twins, Samantha and Sammy, and how each is affected by screen time.

“The study is based on twin research, so we thought that’s where we should start,” says Camacho, who drew the final graphic novel.

“There was a lot of rewriting and rewording, because we were summarizing and trying to use simpler words,” says Heslop, who drew the original storyboards for the novel. “But I think I have better time management and better communication skills now, because we had to think about what we really needed to say and how we should say it in a way that people would understand.”

The students’ projects were judged Thursday by volunteer IBG faculty members and graduate students, and part of the judges’ assessment was how clearly students expressed their ideas on how to communicate science better.

“Definitely more visual appeal,” says Chloe Ibarra, who with classmate Alejandra Franco also chose the video games and impulsivity study. “If you look at the study, there’s nothing that really catches your eye, but if you look at ours,” and she indicates a poster on an easel behind them that takes a vision board approach to communicating the science, “there’s color everywhere and it’s interesting to look at.”

For Isaac Aranda and his project partners Josue Sanchez and Leo Lin, who also chose the video games and impulsivity study, a key to communicating science is using language that people will understand: “We had to look a lot of stuff up,” Aranda says, “and I don’t know if everyone would have the patience to do that.”

But it’s important to find the right words and the right way to talk about the science, Sanchez says, because “this study isn’t saying video games are bad, it’s really saying we shouldn’t be on our phones all the time.”

Alejandra Franco (left) and Chloe Ibarra (right) with their project that emphasizes the need for visual interest when communicating science.

Institute for Behavioral Genetics scientist Daniel Gustavson (right) talks with Northglenn High School students about their science communication project.

IBG research associate Jeff Lessem (left) talks with Kimberly Olivas (center) and Carla Camacho (right) about their science communication project, which won the award for most accessible presentation.

Alecsander Morain (left) and Joseph Zuniga (right) with their project communicating research finding that children’s early interactions with music shape—but don’t determine—their musical lives decades later.

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In a program with Northglenn High School students, Institute for Behavioral Genetics researchers ask for creative and innovative ideas on how to talk about science.

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Top image: Northglenn High School students explain their science communication project to IBG judges. (All photos by Arielle Wiedenbeck/PACES)

Documentary shares secrets of the bees

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 14:21:04 +0000

Documentary shares secrets of the bees Rachel Sauer Fri, 04/03/2026 - 08:21

Rachel Sauer

CU �鶹ӰԺ researcher Samuel Ramsey served as science advisor and a producer, alongside executive producer James Cameron, for Secrets of the Bees, premiering this week on National Geographic, Disney+ and Hulu

Would you like to hear a secret about bees?

Not many people know this, but bees in Southeast Asia have figured out that water buffalo dung isn’t the only pungent substance that will keep hornets away.

See, Vespa mandarinia—more sensationally known as the murder hornet—can wreak havoc on a bee colony. One or two dozen hornets can wipe out an entire colony, although bees have developed some pretty awesome defenses. One of these involves vibrating their flight muscles to create a convection oven effect that essentially cooks invading hornets.

Samuel Ramsey, a �鶹ӰԺ assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, served as science advisor and producer, alongside executive producer James Cameron, on the documentary Secrets of the Bees. (Photo: Shin Arunrugstichai)

However, sometimes a hornet can escape bees’ defenses and flee the hive—but not before leaving a figure-eight pattern of pheromones outside the hive that acts as a beacon to future hornet invasions. Bees deduced that they’d need something even more pungent to spread at the hive entrance to mask the hornet pheromones, “and for a long time we thought they were just relying on water buffalo dung for that purpose,” explains Samuel Ramsey, a �鶹ӰԺ assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

But bees are smart. They figured out they could chew the leaves of an extremely pungent plant to spread at the hive entrance, “which was something we’d never seen before,” Ramsey says.

He and his colleagues discovered this behavior in pursuit of Secrets of the Bees, the fifth installment of the Emmy Award-winning “Secrets of…” series premiering this week on National Geographic, Disney+ and Hulu.

Ramsey, a National Geographic Explorer, served not only as science advisor and featured expert, but as a producer alongside executive producer James Cameron.

Yes, that James Cameron.

“It’s always a pleasure to say I produced a documentary with James Cameron,” Ramsey says with a laugh. “It’s opened up a lot of opportunities to talk with people about bees and together making sure that there’s unity in concept—so we’re not talking in terms of ‘right’ bees and ‘wrong’ bees, but we’re talking about what we can do to support all bees’ survival.”

Communicating science (and bees)

This all came about, in part, because “bees really, really need our help,” Ramsey says, a fact he quickly realized as a lifelong, self-described “bug nerd” observing how human-caused changes to the natural world are affecting bee populations.

During his undergraduate and graduate studies, Ramsey focused on diseases and parasites affecting bees, particularly the Varroa mite, and began raising bees so that he could study them. When he came to CU �鶹ӰԺ, that move included installing a research and observation hive in his lab in the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building.

Because his research interests also include symbiotic relationships, it’s perhaps no surprise that Ramsey the scientist is also Ramsey the science communicator: passionate about describing the beauty, wonder, fragility and resiliency of the natural world to broad and interested—although often non-scientific—audiences. He has been at the vanguard of using social media to tell the dynamic stories of science.

Thanks in part to this outreach, documentarians and filmmakers began requesting his expertise and consultation. He worked on the documentary My Garden of a Thousand Bees and has discussed insects on NPR, CBS and many other outlets, in addition to becoming a National Geographic Explorer. Still, he says, it’s a little surreal to get that call proposing a collaboration with the director of Titanic and Avatar.

“(Cameron) has 300 hives at his farm in New Zealand, so this really has been a labor of love for him,” Ramsey says.

Making a difference for bees

The framework of Secrets of the Bees is to show a hive of honeybees preparing for winter, but that simple concept took Ramsey and his collaborators around the world, exploring bee colonies as the dynamic cities they are and bees not as mindless automatons, but as intelligent, adaptive creatures that form complex societies.

The filmmakers used groundbreaking technologies, including cameras similar to those used in endoscopes, to peer inside hives for never-before-seen views of bees living, working and playing together. Yes, bees play, Ramsey says, and it’s a wonderful thing to see.

The cutting-edge filmmaking technology allows viewers to see close-up, time-lapse scenes of larva growing into adult bees, as well as the funerary process of pushing dead bees from the hive. “The advent of universal childcare is what allowed this to be one of the most successful species on the planet,” Ramsey says, “which you really see up-close in the film.”

He adds that it was important to him that the documentary not sugarcoat the peril in which Earth’s more than 20,000 bee species currently exist, including calamitous population declines associated with climate change, monoculture crops, parasites, chemical use and habitat loss, among other causes.

“But the film also emphasizes hope, because there are things every one of us can do to support bees,” Ramsey says. “Something as simple as planting a window box with flowers can make a big difference to a lot of bees.”

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CU �鶹ӰԺ researcher Samuel Ramsey served as science advisor and a producer, alongside executive producer James Cameron, for Secrets of the Bees, premiering this week on National Geographic, Disney+ and Hulu.

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The case for the liberal arts is still compelling

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 19:16:33 +0000

The case for the liberal arts is still compelling Rachel Sauer Thu, 03/26/2026 - 13:16

Daryl Maeda

A broad education still opens the door to greater freedom—of career opportunities, life satisfaction and civic engagement

“Education is the key that unlocks the golden door to freedom,” said George Washington Carver. He knew whereof he spoke.

Born into slavery, Carver overcame multiple obstacles to attend college, then became a scientist. He framed the link between education and freedom literally, because, for him, it was.

In a broader sense and in contemporary life, a broad education still opens the door to greater freedom—of career opportunities, life satisfaction and civic engagement. It is unsurprising that a person in my position would say this. But the importance of the liberal arts remains compelling, and it’s important to explain why, particularly in the context of the College of Arts and Sciences.

In January, Provost Ann Stevens announced that the college would continue to be a unified entity, rather than split into three units: “To underscore that the arts, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences play a central and vital role in CU �鶹ӰԺ’s mission as a comprehensive university that educates the next generation of informed citizens and leaders, we need a structure that brings our strengths together with purpose.”

The implication of the provost’s decision is clear: the liberal arts matter.

One could certainly be excused for having doubts. On several issues related to higher education, public support has wavered.

A liberal-arts education has been associated with high levels of civic engagement and psychological well-being. (Illustration: iStock)

In 2015, for instance, a Gallup survey found that 57% of Americans expressed confidence in higher education. By 2024, that number dropped to 36%, but by last July, the confidence measure had risen to 42%.

That modest recovery is good news even though it’s praise by faint damnation. There’s more to the story.

Research released in February from Lumina Foundation and Gallup found that, in disciplines ranging from healthcare, engineering to social sciences, natural sciences and arts and humanities, at least 90 percent of current students said they believe the degrees they’re seeking are conveying the skills they need to get a job they want.

As Gallup noted, there’s a dichotomy between the view of average Americans and that of college students. The students are much more optimistic. With good reason.

It is true that those who earn degrees in engineering and business tend to command higher starting salaries than those who hold degrees in English or sociology. However, those with a liberal-arts degrees often enjoy mid-career earnings growth that can rival that of their friends in technical disciplines.

It is also important to recall that while engineering, business and technical degrees do yield higher salaries initially, those with a liberal-arts degree out-earn those with two-year degrees or high school diplomas.

Remember, though, that all disciplines aren’t right for all people. Some students absolutely love engineering, business or technical fields. Others don’t and won’t, regardless of pay.

Money, beyond a living wage, isn’t everything. Studies show that the “return on investment” (or ROI) for liberal-arts majors is a key consideration but is not the only one that students should weigh.

For instance, a liberal-arts education has been associated with high levels of civic engagement and psychological well-being, and it’s hard to put a price on that.

Additionally, as experts at Harvard and elsewhere have noted, a broadly focused education helps prepare students for a future that is maddingly hard to predict. A liberal-arts education “is teaching you not a set of specific competencies in some specific thing, but rather giving you a set of tools to teach you how to think about the next problem over the horizon,” says David Deming, the Scott Black Professor of political economy who co-leads the College-to-Jobs Initiative at Harvard University’s Kennedy School.

Similarly, in a recent essay published in The Boston Globe, a Harvard student who studies applied math and film and visual studies declared that he was skipping a course on artificial intelligence—whose career impacts are undeniable—to take courses on math, economics, film and the science of sleep.

The student, Gabriel Wu, noted one study suggesting that exposure to AI training doesn’t mean succeeding in an AI economy. What shields some workers from automation is the one thing AI cannot replicate: their unique life experiences “and their ability to interpret problems through cultural, ethical, and social contexts accumulated over time,” Wu wrote, explaining why he’s committed to a liberal-arts education.

“Its interdisciplinary rigor pushes students to think critically across a vast spectrum of human knowledge, synthesizing perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to approach problems that no single discipline can fully grasp.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself. But in a series of essays in the coming months, I intend to try. Contrary to much public opinion, the liberal arts are neither irrelevant nor dead. At least as much as ever, they matter. I am obliged to say so.

Daryl Maeda is interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the �鶹ӰԺ.

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A broad education still opens the door to greater freedom—of career opportunities, life satisfaction and civic engagement.

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Looking at the big picture (book) of East Asia

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 20:36:45 +0000

Looking at the big picture (book) of East Asia Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/12/2026 - 13:36

Alexandra Phelps

An innovative project in the Program for Teaching East Asia brings culture and history to Colorado K-12 students

Colorado students don’t need to book a flight or get a passport to experience East Asia, because a program from the �鶹ӰԺ is bringing the region’s culture and history to them.

For the past two spring semesters, students participating in a CU �鶹ӰԺ outreach program to K-12 classrooms have been using a favorite childhood medium: picture books.

The program is coordinated by Lynn Kalinauskas, director for the Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA); Catherine Ishida, assistant director for Japan and Korea Projects; and Christy Go, the program’s graduate student assistant. They have varied their program to involve many East Asian countries, yet the central goal of their program has always been to develop students' cross-cultural understanding.

Lynn Kalinauskas (left), director for the Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA), and graduate student assistant Christy Go (right), along with colleague Catherine Ishida, assistant director for Japan and Korea Projects, coordinate a CU �鶹ӰԺ CU �鶹ӰԺ outreach program to K-12 classrooms that uses a favorite childhood medium: picture books.

Building a program

Three years ago, Kalinauskas, who is also the co-director of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, envisioned a new classroom outreach program that would bring East Asia into K-12 Colorado classrooms via picture books.

In spring 2024, with funding support from the Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship and the Freeman Foundation, the program used books that taught elementary and middle school students about natural science. Books in the program, such as Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean and When the Sakura Bloom, allowed students to see agriculture and plant cycles within an East Asian context.

“Picture books offer a wealth of information. You can look at an image and learn so much,” remarks Kalinauskas. Go noted in an article about the first run of the program that teachers were receptive to the medium that offered a beautiful window into another culture. One educator who is grateful for what the program has done for their classroom said, “The carefully chosen picture book prompted interesting reflections and questions. The artifacts enhanced children's understanding and appreciation of the topic. I appreciated how the presenter drew connections between the children's lives and the experiences of the protagonist of the story.”

As the program progressed, Kalinauskas and her colleagues expanded its scope to cover a new topic. In spring 2025, students learned about the geography of East Asia, and the spring 2026 semester will center on learning about the contributions of famous Japanese people.

Pictures of East Asia

The process of choosing which picture books will be used involves a number of factors. At CU �鶹ӰԺ, the Program for Teaching East Asia is a coordinating site for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. This national organization administers the Freeman Book Awards that recognize quality books for children and young adults that contribute meaningfully to an understanding of East and Southeast Asia. Many of the books chosen for the project have won the Freeman award.

Excellence in Civic & Community Engagement Programming Awards

The Teaching East Asia through Picture Books program recently received an Excellence in Civic & Community Engagement Programming Award from Campus Compact. The award recognizes the many forms that effective on-campus civic and community engagement can take to address areas of need and make deep and long-lasting positive change.

In the spring 2025 semester, the five books chosen were The Ocean Calls: A Haenyeo Mermaid Story by Tina Cho, Warrior Princess: The Story of Khutulun by Sally Deng, The Sound of Silence by Katrina Goldsaito, Rice by Hong Chen Xu and Mommy’s Hometown by Hope Lim.

A book such as Rice can be an important addition to the curriculum as it highlights agricultural practices in southern China, informing the reader about the impact geography has on people’s daily lives, their environment and cultural practices.

Students teaching students

Organizers note that the program is innovative not because it teaches students through picture books, but because it gives an internship opportunity to CU �鶹ӰԺ students of all disciplines and brings these new interns into Colorado classrooms.

Every fall, TEA staff begin recruiting for the spring outreach. Applicants have to submit short essays and participate in an interview. It is important that students selected be excited to teach about East Asia.

The process of working with the CU �鶹ӰԺ students is individualized and collaborative. Go says she works as a mentor for the students, adding that the staff work with student interns on multiple levels from how they should dress when presenting in classrooms, school procedures and what to expect when teaching children. Students work with the staff to identify the important characteristics of their assigned book and develop a lesson plan. Because students may visit different grade levels, they also learn to adapt their lessons to different age groups.

Teachers participating in the program often try to align the book selection with the material they’re already teaching. “We had kindergarten and second grade classrooms that were learning about the life cycles of plants, so they chose When the Sakura Bloom because they wanted to talk about the connection (between the East Asian representation and their science),” reflects Go. “Tracing the life cycle of the Sakura (cherry blossom) tree in the story not only reinforced student learning of the plant life cycle but also engaged students in discussing cultural events inspired by these natural processes through the presentation of hanami (cherry blossom–viewing picnic events) in the story.”

Lily Elliott (EBio, AsianSt'25) reads Rice to elementary school students. (Photo: Christy Go)

In the classrooms, CU student interns provide background information for students. The CU interns each read aloud while pointing out cultural representations, key characters and concepts, location, relationships between characters and relevant context related to the themes, science or geography. One CU student teaching The Ocean Calls introduced different sea life and later asked students while they were reading to point out the animals. This is followed by a lesson plan and an interactive activity. For one student teaching Sound of Silence, a book about a boy trying to find silence in the city of Tokyo, “our student found sound clips of different places in Tokyo and had students listen and guess where they were,” remembers Go. “Students loved it!” The presentations are like “a traveling show,” says Kalinauskas, who oversees each step of this process.

Beyond their involvement in coordinating with teachers, choosing books and mentoring student interns, staff take their commitment to the program one step further by driving student interns to schools all around Colorado.

More than a cup of noodles

In the first year, 64 classrooms participated; the following year, interns presented in 49 classrooms. The classes are usually in the Denver-�鶹ӰԺ metro area but have reached as far as Greeley. While mainly aimed at elementary classrooms, program organizers have also brought their CU interns to middle schools and one high school classroom. Additionally, if a school is too far to be reached by car, like one school in Grand Junction, interns have done interactive Zoom presentations.

This program has been enriching for Colorado K-12 students while simultaneously being a great educational experience for the CU �鶹ӰԺ student interns. Kalinauskas and Go have found that through this program, many students have gained professional skills and experience that have expanded their career pathways. Two former graduate students in education are now teaching in local schools. Another student intern, who taught a book on Korea, was so inspired that she moved to Korea to teach English.

"Picture books offer a wealth of information. You can look at an image and learn so much."

For Colorado teachers, the program doesn’t end when interns leave their classroom. Although the presentations cover only one book, each classroom receives a copy of every book in that semester’s program for students to read for years to come. Teachers also receive cultural information and teaching resources to engage students in learning about all the books in the program. TEA also hosts a fall in-person workshop for Colorado teachers focused on the same books. Kalinauskas and Go note that although they aim to expand their program to many new classrooms, some teachers love it so much they have participated in multiple semesters.

TEA is bringing its program into Colorado schools next spring. The focus for Spring 2026 will be on the biographies of famous Japanese people and Japanese culture. The program features the story of a young female artist in Japan during the Edo period, the first woman to summit Mount Everest and a story about how Momofuku Ando created one of the world’s most popular foods, instant ramen.

“The picture book Magic Ramen not only teaches us about how instant ramen was created but takes us back in time to Japan post-World War II, where a young man was trying to feed people in Osaka,” says Kalinauskas. “We don’t always think about that historical context when we are just having our cup of noodles.”

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An innovative project in the Program for Teaching East Asia brings culture and history to Colorado K-12 students.

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Top image: Isaac Kou (CompSci, EBio'25) reads "The Sound of Silence" to first-grade students. (Photo: Christy Go)

CU �鶹ӰԺ commits to green chemistry

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 18:47:17 +0000

CU �鶹ӰԺ commits to green chemistry Rachel Sauer Tue, 11/04/2025 - 11:47

Rachel Sauer

In May, campus leaders signed the Green Chemistry Commitment to practice and teach sustainable chemistry—an effort being encouraged and advanced by students

For much of the history of chemistry, the science was done how it was done—with fleeting or no thought given to things like lab energy consumption or the environmental persistence of toxic chemicals used in experiments. Those things were simply considered the wages of scientific progress.

As early as the 1940s, however, some chemists began asking if there were better, less hazardous, less environmentally damaging ways to do the science. By the 1990s, chemists Paul Anastas and John Warner had given a name to this new approach: green chemistry. In their 1998 book Green Chemistry: Theory and Practice, they detailed the 12 principles of green chemistry, which include preventing waste rather than trying to treat it or clean it up after the fact and designing chemical products to preserve efficacy of function while reducing toxicity.

Since that time, green chemistry has become a movement as universities and labs around the world evolve the practice and teaching of chemistry to reduce its impact on environmental and human health and safety.

In May, CU �鶹ӰԺ Chancellor Justin Schwartz and Department of Chemistry Chair Wei Zhang signed the Green Chemistry Commitment, not only committing CU �鶹ӰԺ to green chemistry in practice and principle but joining a worldwide network of universities working to expand the community of green chemists and affect lasting change in chemistry education.

The �鶹ӰԺ has been very involved in the green chemistry movement, and in May Chancellor Justin Schwartz and then-Department of Chemistry Chair Wei Zhang signed the Green Chemistry Commitment, not only committing CU �鶹ӰԺ to green chemistry in practice and principle, but joining a worldwide network of universities working to expand the community of green chemists and affect lasting change in chemistry education.

“Signing (the Green Chemistry Commitment) is an important step toward integrating green chemistry into curriculum, theory, toxicology and lab applications,” says Forrest Yegge, chair of the Green Chemistry CU Student Government (CUSG) Environmental Board subcommittee and a junior studying philosophy and ecology and evolutionary biology.

“Social justice-wise, I think it’s our responsibility to be more aware of the effects we are having on the environment,” adds Jules Immonen, a first-year student studying chemistry who serves as secretary of the CUSG Environmental Board. “Obviously, sustainability is something I’m passionate about, but even people who aren’t should be able to learn how to incorporate these practices in an easy way.”

Doing better chemistry

CU �鶹ӰԺ’s embrace of green chemistry has been growing for years, says Kathryn Ramirez-Aguilar, CU �鶹ӰԺ Green Labs Program manager. The Department of Chemistry and Green Labs have been partnering on green chemistry efforts on campus, leading initiatives on everything from education opportunities to sustainable lab practices. Signing the Green Chemistry Commitment (GCC) is an important step, Ramirez-Aguilar says: “It’s a huge opportunity to involve students in designing curriculum, and it aligns with CU’s Climate Action Plan outlined last year.” In fact, she adds, members of the CUSG Environmental Board have been at the vanguard of bringing the GCC to the attention of campus leadership.

Ashley Ley, a chemistry graduate candidate and member of the Green Chemistry CUSG Environmental Board subcommittee, emphasizes that green chemistry is most importantly about practice, not just theory. “If you look at someone like Dr. (Jacquie) Richardson, she’s been making changes to methods, working toward greener methods using less harmful chemicals in the Organic Chemistry Teaching Labs. In Organic Chemistry 2, there’s a lab focused on atom economy, and one of the previous (Green Labs Chemistry) team leads worked with Dr. Richardson to incorporate acetone recycling, so now organic chemistry teaching labs only use recycled acetone for cleaning.

“These labs have also started using water recirculatory buckets because there are reflux reactions where you need a ton of water and normally it would go through the condensers and down the sink. Now it’s being recirculated, and we’re saving a lot of water. Last summer, they incorporated no-touch doors in the labs [as part of a collaborative project with Green Labs], so you can get in and out of the labs without having to take off your gloves.”

In another campuswide green chemistry application, Amrita George, a professional research assistant of many years in the Department of Integrative Physiology and volunteer lead for the Green Labs Team, is working on introducing a chemical sharing initiative in which research labs share chemicals within their research building.

Kathryn Ramirez-Aguilar (left), CU �鶹ӰԺ Green Labs Program manager, and Matt Wise (right), director of chemistry instruction and Department of Chemistry associate chair, give a presentation about incorporating green chemistry into the introductory chemistry curriculum. (Photo: Kathryn Ramirez-Aguilar)

“This has a lot of support from the Environmental Health and Safety group,” George says. “It aligns with one of the principles of green chemistry, which is to reduce the total amount of hazardous chemicals used and, therefore, waste created. [The initiative] allows researchers to see the chemical inventory of other labs within their building and share amongst themselves rather than ordering new stocks for each lab, which is usually what researchers do. Often these stocks sit on the shelf and expire before the lab ever uses them again.”

Ramirez-Aguilar adds that the chemical sharing initiative is also a money saver for labs by reducing purchasing—which also benefits a reduction in carbon emissions similar to a campuswide focus on reducing labs’ energy consumption, as labs are among the most energy-intensive spaces on campus.

Valentina Osorio, a chemistry graduate student and member of the Green Chemistry CUSG Environmental Board subcommittee, adds that General Chemistry teaching faculty have adapted student experiments and lab processes so that they can use drops of a chemical rather than milliliters of it. This makes a significant difference when thousands of students are conducting the experiments each year.

Performing research sustainably

While the benefits of green chemistry practice and teaching are broad and affect many communities and populations, among those most affected are students, says Ana Curry, a chemistry graduate student and member of the Green Chemistry CUSG Environmental Board subcommittee: “I’m currently working in materials chemistry, and I believe strongly that if my research is focused on sustainability, I should also be performing that research sustainably.”

Osorio notes that while her research focus is environmental chemistry, “I’m studying the impacts of air and water pollution, and while I’m not really synthesizing anything, what I’m researching is largely impacted by what humans are doing.”

Yegge adds that in addition to the environmental and social justice benefits of green chemistry, “as I prepare for grad school and I’m increasingly worried about securing funding, I think that sustainable practices on campus and in labs are crucial for resilience in academia and in research. We need to be adopting these strategies so we can keep doing the science we’re doing.”

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In May, campus leaders signed the Green Chemistry Commitment to practice and teach sustainable chemistry—an effort being encouraged and advanced by students.

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Top image: iStock

Afghanistan did not have to be Vietnam 2.0, says former intelligence advisor

Anonymous — Thu, 30 May 2024 18:52:16 +0000

Afghanistan did not have to be Vietnam 2.0, says former intelligence advisor Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/30/2024 - 12:52

Bradley Worrell

Gail Nelson, a career intelligence officer and CU �鶹ӰԺ alumnus, advised Afghan military intelligence leaders after the United States drove the Taliban from power

It’s been almost three years since the Afghanistan government fell to the Taliban, and with the passage of time some have come to believe that America’s efforts to install and support a government that was democratic and friendly to the West were doomed from the start.

Gail Nelson is not one of them.

“It didn’t have to be that way,” he says. “If there was more respect and authority given to the Afghan leaders to take responsibility for combating the Taliban, things might have been different. I can’t say for sure the outcome would have changed, but at least the responsibility would have been more on the Afghans and less on the U.S. and NATO.”

Nelson speaks from experience. A �鶹ӰԺ graduate with master’s and doctorate degrees in political science and a U.S. Civil Service and Air Force intelligence career , Nelson served as a military advisor to top Afghan intelligence officials for two years during the early 2000s and for three years during the early 2010s.

Gail Nelson is pictured in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2013, with the tomb of the late king, Mohammad Nadir Shaw, in the background. Nelson says he was optimistic about the country’s chances during his first deployment to the country as a senior intelligence advisor from 2003 to 2005 but grew increasingly concerned about its prospects during his second deployment, from 2010 to 2013.

Those first years in Afghanistan—after the Taliban had been driven from power by U.S. and coalition forces following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on American soil—were promising, according to Nelson.

Promising early years

In December 2003, Nelson was one of about two dozen U.S. advisors—all military veterans of senior military ranks —who were hired by a U.S. military contractor to work in Afghanistan. Representing different military branches and experienced in different fields, all were hired to advise top Afghan defense and intelligence officials.

“ We and the Afghans had radically different cultural backgrounds” Nelson says, “But we all had the common goal in getting Afghans out from under their experience of Soviet occupation and civil war. They had a clear determination of moving Westward as was mine. It was a positive approach but there was much work to do in institutionalizing the change.”

Afghan intelligence leaders he worked with were Soviet-trained from the 1980s, when the Soviet Union occupied the country, so they already knew intelligence strategies and doctrine, but they wanted to embrace U.S. and NATO methods as quickly as possible, according to Nelson.

“Afghanistan’s top intelligence official personally asked me: Help us develop an organization that is Western-oriented in organization and doctrine,” he says. “They wanted our help learning to run a defense and intelligence organization aligned with the West. They saw it as important for Afghanistan to be part of the West.”

In Afghanistan, the culture grants respect to people based on their age, honoring the experiences of life they must share, according to Nelson, so the fact that he and many of his fellow advisors were older was an asset used for maximum effect.

“They decide how old you are, and then they decide if they should listen to you,” he says. “So, my fellow advisors and I had the advantage of age in our favor when offering advice to younger Afghan leaders.”

Nelson says his daily duties at the time typically involved meeting with top defense and intelligence officials to exchange ideas on military intelligence theory and practice, and to develop papers on intelligence production, collection, and counterintelligence. These matters included doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel, and facilities.

Plenty of expertise to share

Nelson had extensive strategic intelligence knowledge based upon his 26 years in Western Europe, where he was responsible for Soviet/Warsaw Pact and Post-Soviet political intelligence estimates. His master’s and doctorate degrees in political science earned at CU �鶹ӰԺ specializing in German and Soviet studies were invaluable reinforcements to the challenges that lay ahead.

He took mandatory retirement from the Air Force in 2001, at the age of 57, retiring as a colonel and retired from the U.S. Civil Service as well. However, after 9/11, military contractors were looking for individuals with specialized expertise, and Nelson says he believed he could put his skills to good use in Afghanistan, where national leaders were seeking to create a country free of the Taliban’s harsh rule.

Nelson is pictured recently in his library in his �鶹ӰԺ home. The framed photo on the bookshelf is the late CU political science professor Edward J. Rozek, who was a mentor. Nelson says what he learned in his German and Soviet area studies courses while obtaining a master’s degree and PhD from CU �鶹ӰԺ were invaluable to him in his job as an Air Force intelligence officer.

Although Nelson worked in Afghanistan as a private contractor, he had plenty of opportunities to observe the interactions of U.S. and NATO active-duty military leaders with their Afghan counterparts. He believes Afghans were willing to give those Western military representatives the benefit of the doubt for the first year or so that he was in the country, but things changed over time.

“U.S./NATO officers found great difficulty in adapting to Afghan culture and were not inclined to do so. They had no background in South Asian area studies, making it difficult for them to understand the political, psychological and leadership styles of Afghan military leaders,” Nelson says. For their part, Afghan officers generally found it difficult to embrace the primacy of computer technologies within their institutions preferring instead the affinity of direct human discourse.

Complicating matters, Nelson says the decision to limit U.S./NATO military personnel deployments in Afghanistan to one year limited how effective those officers could be working with representatives of the Afghan defense ministry and general staff leadership.

“Institution-building is not easy; it takes time,” he says. “And in a culture like Afghanistan, you’re not going to make changes quickly.”

What’s more, it was always clear to both U.S. military officials and their Afghan counterparts that Iraq—which the United States invaded in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein from power and search for weapons of mass destruction—would take precedence over Afghanistan, Nelson says.

Despite these obstacles—and many others associated with attempting to assist governing a country with eight major tribal groups and more than 15 subcultures—Nelson says he still felt reasonably optimistic about the country’s prospects when he departed in December 2005.

He went on to take consulting assignments as a military advisor in the Philippines and Iraq.

Signs of a downward spiral

In September 2010, Nelson returned to Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, and he says it was immediately clear things had changed for the worse, in part because the security situation had deteriorated.

Threats to Afghanistan leaders including NATO officers were visible throughout Kabul with the construction of barriers on major roads and thoroughfares. One assassin attempted to kill the chief of military Intelligence in 2011 but failed to reach his target. Safehouses for advisors were primary targets as well, in which two guards were killed at Nelson’s residence, followed by at least two advisors killed in car bombs in 2012. Three Afghan children known to Nelson were also killed at the Gate to Camp Eggers by a suicide bomber.

Kabul had become a more dangerous place.

Meanwhile, Nelson says he was disheartened to realize that he and other military contractors were increasingly being sidelined by U.S./NATO active-duty military members, despite their deep connections with their Afghan counterparts. He says Western leaders also increasingly bypassed Afghan leaders as they took the lead on Afghan-NATO missions against the Taliban—a decision that had negative repercussions for the country’s security when Western forces drastically scaled down their presence in the country while Afghans felt disempowered to fill the vacuum

At the same time, years into the operation in Afghanistan, Nelson says U.S./NATO military planners still had not done their homework when it came to teaching U.S. military personnel about Afghan history, culture, and geopolitics.

Outside of the capital, most of Afghanistan’s population live in small, rural villages, many without electricity, that adhere to tribalism and Islamic traditions. Most of the Afghans who live in those communities never leave them, which creates a provincial attitude reinforced by complete indifference to events in Kabul, according to Nelson.

“So, a young U.S. military officer from Kansas telling a village chieftain how to run things is not going to go over well,” he says. “You can’t just march into a country like Afghanistan and think they are going to embrace a modern, computer, business-oriented model when 10 miles outside of Kabul they don’t have lightbulbs.”

For their part, the Taliban were successful in their propaganda efforts to get those villagers to see Western troops not just as foreigners, but as alien outsiders with no respect for the country’s deep cultural and religious traditions, Nelson says.

When he left Afghanistan for the last time in September 2013, he was deeply ambivalent about the country’s prospects. When the country fell to the Taliban in September 2021, it did not surprise him, Nelson says.

Marching into an area we had no real knowledge of, you see the lesson now for what it is once it collapsed in 2021, and we’re back to a Taliban regime.”

“We lost traction on the Afghan defense side,” he says. “They were no longer responsible for what was happening in the field. It was too late; they were not engaged. That had morphed over to NATO and the U.S. taking the lead in combatting the Taliban.”

What’s more, the Trump administration’s decision in February 2020 to negotiate directly with the Taliban—and to exclude the Afghan government—for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country “effectively surrendered Afghan sovereignty,” Nelson says.

Lessons not learned

Today, three years after the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, Nelson says he is worried that America has not learned two vital lessons from its longest war.

The first is not standing by Afghans leaders who stood with the United States after the Taliban was driven from power in 2001. Specifically, Nelson says he is deeply troubled that the U.S. and NATO have made no concerted efforts to evacuate and provide asylum for top Afghan political and military leaders before or after the country fell to the Taliban in August 2021.

Of the Afghan intelligence leaders he worked with, Nelson says one was killed in the aftermath of the Taliban’s retaking of the country, at least one is in hiding in Afghanistan and one is in neighboring Tajikistan but is in limbo there, unable to gain U.S. assistance. Nelson says he is unsure about the fate is to several other top Afghan intelligence officials he knew from his time in the country.

Leaving those Afghan leaders behind was not right and sends a bad signal to U.S. allies and potential allies, Nelson notes. He says he has contacted the U.S. State Department, the White House and other government agencies advocating for asylum for those Afghan leaders but has received no response.

Meanwhile, Nelson says he believes many of the problems the United States faced in Afghanistan arose because military planners were not experts in area studies for the region, and he says part of that blame goes to universities, which he says typically do not offer master’s degrees and PhDs in area studies.

“If universities aren’t graduating MA/PhDs in area studies for various regions of the world, we are going to continue to produce people who know nothing about regional histories, cultures and geopolitics that dictate whether U.S. national security policies are a success or a failure,” he says. “We blew it in Vietnam, and we blew it in Afghanistan. I believe one of the key issues was there was a failure among the Pentagon planners, who were coming out of a background that was functional and not area-studies related.”

Reflecting on America’s war in Afghanistan, Nelson says, “Marching into an area we had no real knowledge of, you see the lesson now for what it is once it collapsed in 2021, and we’re back to a Taliban regime.”

Top image: a view of Kabul, Afghanistan (Photo: iStock)

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Gail Nelson, a career intelligence officer and CU �鶹ӰԺ alumnus, advised Afghan military intelligence leaders after the United States drove the Taliban from power.

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Reducing gender inequality, one biodegradable menstrual pad at a time

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 18:01:33 +0000

Reducing gender inequality, one biodegradable menstrual pad at a time Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 12/05/2023 - 11:01

Sarah Kuta

Through his nonprofit, Ajume Wingo, CU �鶹ӰԺ associate professor of philosophy, is providing sanitary pads and menstrual education in his home country, Cameroon

Several years ago, Ajume Wingo was riding a bus in his home country of Cameroon when the vehicle made an unexpected stop.

From his seat, the CU �鶹ӰԺ associate professor of philosophy watched as a group of women began shouting at a young girl who looked to be between 11 and 13 years old.

“I heard them say things like, ‘You are a disgrace to women,’ and, ‘How dare you travel when you ought to be sitting in place,’” Wingo said. “When I heard that phrase, I understood what was going on.”

“Sitting in place” is a euphemism for menstruation, and Wingo quickly realized that the bewildered girl had just gotten her period for the first time. He calmly approached her and explained that menstruation is a normal, natural experience—and that she had nothing to be ashamed of.

Ajume Wingo, a CU �鶹ӰԺ associate professor of philosophy, co-founded PridePads in 2019 to educate youth and community members in Cameroon about menstruation and provide biodegradable sanitary pads.

After that experience, Wingo decided he needed to do something to help reduce the stigma around menstruation in Cameroon. In 2019, he co-founded PridePads Africa, a nonprofit that educates girls, boys and community members about menstruation and gives them biodegradable sanitary pads.

Though the Covid-19 pandemic interrupted the organization’s work, PridePads Africa has already reached thousands of rural Cameroonians. Slowly but surely, it’s changing the narrative around periods.

“In a couple of years, students and community members have gone from thinking menstruation is bad, dirty or something to be ashamed of to understanding that it’s a natural biological process,” says Elizabeth Cleveland, PridePads Africa’s executive director.

Addressing period poverty

Around the world, period poverty remains an often-overlooked problem that can exacerbate gender inequality. This term applies to women and girls who have limited or inadequate access to menstrual products and menstrual health education, either because of financial constraints, social and cultural stigmas or some mix of both. The World Health Organization, UNICEF and other global humanitarian organizations have all identified period poverty as a major issue.

In Cameroon, girls often stay home from school each month during their periods. Over time, they fall behind in their classes and, eventually, many drop out entirely. This may ultimately lead them down a path toward early teenage marriage, sex trafficking and teenage pregnancy.

“In most African primary schools, the girls are at the top of their class,” says Wingo. “And they go on like that until toward the end of secondary school, when the whole thing reverses. Girls disappear from classes every month and, suddenly, the boys are ahead, and the girls are behind.”

Poor performance in school—or dropping out altogether—means African girls have limited options as they reach young adulthood. Because of the stigma and shame around menstruation, many also grapple with low self-esteem. And, without access to sanitary products, some girls develop infections from using old newspapers, leaves or rags.

But providing them with sanitary pads—and educating communities about menstruation more broadly—means girls can stay in school and thrive. This gives them more choices, like whether to work, get married (and, perhaps just as important, whom to marry) and raise a family.

“Women have so much to offer the world, and we are giving them a chance to have a voice and a seat at the table in many places where that is uncommon,” says Stephanie Carter, PridePads Africa co-founder. “It is hard to believe that something as simple as a sanitary pad and education can have such a profound impact on the world, but that is the power of information.”

PridePads Africa staff members in Ngaoundéré, Cameroon, produce and distribute biodegradable pads, as well as spread the message of menstrual health and hygiene.

‘Simple ways’ to make life better

PridePads Africa relies on a team of staffers in Ngaoundéré, Cameroon, to produce and distribute biodegradable pads, as well as spread the message of menstrual health and hygiene.

They make the biodegradable pads using two machines from Aakar Innovations in India, including one that was purchased with funding from the �鶹ӰԺ Valley Rotary Club, the �鶹ӰԺ Flatirons Rotary Club and the Rotary Club of Denver Southeast.

The machines have the capacity to produce between 1,500 to 1,800 pads per day using materials that break down completely within 90 days, like natural gum fibers sourced from pine trees. That’s a huge improvement from commercially produced sanitary pads, which are made primarily of plastic. Scientists estimate plastic pads will take between 500 and 800 years to decompose.

“In fighting one problem, period poverty, we did not want to contribute to another, environmental degradation,” says Cleveland.

On the education front, the Cameroon-based team also visits schools and women’s groups, where they explain the biological process of menstruation and the reproductive system more broadly. They also teach girls how to manage their periods by wearing pads.

In the future, Wingo would like to expand the reach of PridePads Africa to other regions of Cameroon and beyond. In the meantime, he likens the organization’s impact to the starfish story, in which a child walking along the sand throws one beached starfish at a time back into the water. A passerby asks, “There are so many, how can you make a difference?” The child tosses another starfish and replies, “I just made a difference in that one’s life.”

Even seemingly small actions—like providing a teenage girl with sanitary pads—can lead to big ripple effects, Wingo says.

“A lot of people talk about high-level philosophical principles to address gender discrimination when, in fact, there is something concrete we can do,” he says. “This project has caused me to start thinking about very simple ways we can make life better for people.”

[video:https://youtu.be/_WsTDU1UjYM?si=VQVbHE0mbBlZVrxo]

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Through his nonprofit, Ajume Wingo, CU �鶹ӰԺ associate professor of philosophy, is providing sanitary pads and menstrual education in his home country, Cameroon.

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Rise of book banning stems from ‘culture war,’ experts say

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 17:39:04 +0000

Rise of book banning stems from ‘culture war,’ experts say Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/26/2023 - 11:39

Maxwell Garby

At a panel discussion co-sponsored by CU �鶹ӰԺ Center for Humanities and the Arts, literacy experts championed children’s access to literature

Though censorship and book banning are nothing new, the recent upswing in this censorship in public institutions has compelled many to protest these limitations on their access to diverse views.

During a panel discussion hosted at the �鶹ӰԺ Public Library Wednesday evening, co-sponsored by the �鶹ӰԺ Center for Humanities and the Arts, Adam Crawley, a CU �鶹ӰԺ assistant teaching professor of literacy studies and the discussion's moderator, led a conversation on the right to read in K-8 schools and libraries and the fundamental right to access literature.

Jo Currier, a fifth-grade teacher in the �鶹ӰԺ Valley School District and a mother of three, offered the perspective of a parent and an educator. Currier strongly supported “promoting access for all students and representation in the curriculum.”

Colorado author Andrea Wang, who explores Asian American culture and identity in her picture books and middle school novels, said that as a second-generation Chinese American, she recognizes the importance of children being able to read books in which the characters are like them. “I write the books that I needed as a kid,” she said. “Everyone deserves to see themselves represented in a book.”

Panelists Adam Crawley (left), Jo Currier, Andrea Wang and David Farnan discuss frequently challenged children's books.

David Farnan, director of the �鶹ӰԺ Public Library who has extensive experiences dealing with censorship, noted that this current surge in book banning is due, in part, to the ongoing “culture war.” Mentioning the librarian code of ethics, Farnan emphasized that he “will not just oppose but resist censorship in all of its forms.”

Farnan said he believes the recent uptick in censorship is related, in part, to an “orchestrated attack primarily on LGBTQ authors and stories, and authors and stories about people of color.” He added that this attack is on “any type of curriculum having to do with a story that is not having to do with White hegemony.”

Wang added that this is also due to the “fear of the other,” and cited the “rising anti-Asian sentiment since the pandemic began.”

In response to the question of whether censorship might ever be appropriate, Currier noted how some curriculum can tend to favor one predominant perspective over less dominant ones, so educators face a challenging dilemma. Should they opt to substitute these materials with more diverse viewpoints, or should the original content be taught, but through a more critical lens? As difficult a question as that is, it is important to make sure that there is equal opportunity for representation, Currier said.

Another challenging aspect is the issue of self-censorship. Pointing to a few recent examples—including the award ceremony for a Palestinian author being canceled at the Frankfurt Book Fair and, earlier this year, an author's decision not to publish a novel set in Russia following criticism from Ukrainian readers—Farnan said that these acts are “just solely inappropriate” and that it both “underestimates the power of books and overestimates it too."

“Books do not cause harm,” Farnan said. “They may represent viewpoints that are different. They may be offensive, they may be something that you find difficult to identify with, but you can choose not to read them. The point of books is, in some ways, to explore ideas and selves and identities and worlds that you cannot and do not live.”

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At a panel discussion co-sponsored by CU �鶹ӰԺ Center for Humanities and the Arts, literacy experts championed children’s access to literature.

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