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Colorado College Bulletin

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HOME PAGE features a series of brief articles on recent happenings at Colorado College. This issue includes stories on the last few months of the campaign,  the new history endowed chair, CC scientists who studied bacterial organisms, Hall of Fame inductees, coaches awarded national recognition, an alumna who was on TV, a professor saying goodbye, Century Chest resealed, and a piano duo who performed at Carnegie Hall.

Campaign Donors Set New Record

Following on momentum from the Kresge Challenge and a $4 million gift from the Packard Foundation, donors brought the total contributed in gifts and pledges to the Campaign for Colorado College to just over $80 million at the end of 2000. CC received 3,688 gifts in December totaling nearly $5.5 million -- a new mark for the number of gifts and total dollar amount ever received in one month at the college. With their generosity, donors also put the college on a record pace for gifts received during a fiscal year, which ends June 30. As of the beginning of February, the college had received $12,103,833, breaking the previous high of $12,060,510 set in 1998-99.

The Kresge Foundation will award CC $1 million for the Tutt Science Center on the attainment of the $83 million goal for the entire campaign. All gifts to the college for any purpose count toward the Kresge Challenge.

Grant to Fund for New Southwest Studies and Environmental Science Program

The W. M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles has awarded Colorado College a grant for $400,000 for a new curricular initiative to study “A Sense of Place.” This program will examine issues of the American Southwest from an interdisciplinary perspective encompassing the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities. Read a press release for more.

Visit the Campaign Web page, where online giving is now available.

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History Professor Named to Hochman Endowed Chair

CC History Professor Susan Ashley will become the first holder of the William R. Hochman Chair in History.

Phil Swan, Class of ’84, the youngest donor of $1 million or more in Colorado College history, recently established the Hochman Chair in honor of his former professor.

The Hochman Chair is one of five professorships endowed to date during the campaign -- and the first at the college named for an active professor. Hochman came to CC 45 years ago to teach U.S. history.

“Phil Swan’s tribute testifies to Bill Hochman’s extraordinary influence as a teacher,” Ashley says. “It’s a particular privilege to hold a chair that honors a person who has inspired so many students.”

Teaching at the college since 1970, Ashley specializes in modern European history, particularly French and Italian history. She teaches a broad range of courses on topics such as intellectual history of Europe, history of memory, criminality and justice in modern Europe, the French Revolution, and 20th-century Europe.

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In Search of the X-philes

By BARRY NOREEN

Jennifer Kerr, left, and Ryan Olson take samples from a stream below the Summitville mine near Alamosa. The students isolated bacteria and cultivated them in the lab, where the organisms displayed unusual abilities, such as surviving in a highly acidic environment containing toxic amounts of heavy metals, such as copper, zinc and arsenic. Photo by Christian Murdock of the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Since the mid-1960s, an army of scientists has fanned out across the planet, probing for previously undiscovered life in the most improbable places, from boiling hot springs and active volcanoes to mine shafts and subsurface Antarctica.

These journeys into the primordial ooze have yielded an astonishing bounty. Scientists have isolated enzymes for use in products ranging from drugs to laundry detergent. The bacteria are called extremophiles. The discoveries so far have been impressive, but scientists agree on one thing: This is only the beginning.

Ken Andrews, a biology professor, loves his “weird creepies.”

Andrews may not be on the cutting edge of extremophile research but he’s helping to train those who might be some day. Students in his class “San Luis Valley Extremophiles” learn how to extract bacteria from a number of places, including a very salty lake, hot springs and the toxic high-altitude holding ponds of the Summitville mine southwest of Alamosa.

Mostly because of recently discovered bacteria, Andrews said, “We now know that the number of types of bacteria inhabiting most environments, extreme or not, is far greater than we thought 10 or 15 years ago.”

Ryan Olson and Jennifer Kerr were Andrews’ only students this fall; they learned how to distill weird creepies from the muck and mire. But the larger lesson was about the limitless potential of bug-mining.

Olson and Kerr drew bacteria samples from the orange-brown muck at Summitville, which is laden with heavy metals. Within days, they succeeded in cultivating colonies of microbes in a CC lab. The bacteria showed bizarre talents, such as the ability to live in a highly acidic environment in the presence of toxic quantities of zinc, copper and arsenic. “Almost everywhere we expected to find extremophiles, we did,” Andrews said. “It is fascinating stuff, there isn’t any question about it.”

The study of extremophiles now involves virtually every branch of science, as biologists, chemists and geologists have sometimes pooled their efforts to see how organisms can push the survival envelope.

Story excerpted with permission of the Colorado Springs Gazette.

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Hall of Fame to Induct Five

By DAVE MOROSS
sports information director
Colorado College will officially induct the seventh class to its Athletics Hall of Fame on Saturday, April 21, during a ceremony at the Doubletree World Arena.

Three CC sports will share the limelight as the honorees include former women’s basketball standout Lorna Kollmeyer ‘80, soccer legends Kerry Tashiro ‘90 and Saad Sahawneh ‘51, the 1950 football team and ex-gridder-turned-NFL Films president Steve Sabol ‘65.

Kollmeyer still reigns as the lady cagers’ all-time leader in scoring and rebounding, both single-season and career. With 2,109 points in her four years, she is the only player in program history to reach the 2,000 plateau. An AIAW first-team All-American as a senior in 1979-80, she helped Colorado College to four consecutive regional playoff berths, including a Region 7 championship and national bid in 1977. She was named a Colorado Sportswoman of the Year in 1980.

With 60 goals and 137 total points during her four years on the women’s Division I soccer team, Tashiro ranks as the program’s all-time leader in both categories. The Tigers reached the NCAA tournament all four of her seasons, including appearances in the 1986 and 1989 national championship matches. The two-time All-American and three-time Academic All-American also holds school records for most goals (21) and points (45) in a season, as well as career hat tricks (4) and multiple-goal games in a season (8) and career (16).

While the late Bill Boddington is known as the father of soccer at Colorado College, Sahawneh must be regarded as the program’s true founder. An engineering major from Jordan, where he originally learned the game and has since returned to live, he gathered four other foreign students in fall of 1949 and formed CC’s first team. Despite a 2-1 loss to Colorado School of Mines in their first match, the Tigers posted a 5-4-1 record a year later.

Sabol was a nationally ranked punter and all-conference running back for the Tigers, but his creativity off the field and flair for public relations are what earned him the most notoriety. Now president of NFL Films, a company founded by his father, Sabol produces every piece that leaves corporate headquarters. Among other innovations, his firm was the first to combine action footage with music, use graphics to analyze game tactics and to use hand-held slow motion photography.

The 1950 football team, coached by Allison Binns, is regarded by many as Colorado College’s best ever. The Tigers finished 9-1 that season en route to winning the Rocky Mountain Conference championship. They suffered their only loss at the hands of non-league opponent Colorado A & M in the third game of the season, then went on to win their final seven decisions. Thirty-four members of the squad, including Binns, are being inducted into the Hall of Fame.

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Coaches Win Prestigious Awards

Horst Richardson, who recently completed his 35th season as head coach of the men’s soccer team, has been honored as recipient of the National Soccer Coaches Association of America’s prestigious Bill Jeffrey Award.

The award, named for the Penn State University coach, is presented annually for long-term achievement in collegiate soccer. Since taking the CC helm in 1966, Richardson has compiled a distinguished record of 393 victories, 218 defeats and 48 ties. He has guided the Tigers to six Rocky Mountain Intercollegiate Soccer League Titles and 16 trips to the NCAA playoffs. A member of Colorado College’s German department since 1965, he has earned NCAA regional coach-of-the-year honors four times.

Greg Ryan has been named women’s soccer coach of the year (2000) among NCAA Division I independents. Ryan, who guided the Tigers to a 13-7 record this past season, saw his team record the program’s most victories since 1991.

The Tigers also had three players named to the 2000 all-independent team: senior forward Mari Miezwa of Brooklyn Park, Minn., midfielder Kasey Clark of Los Altos, Calif., and junior defender Sophie Hines of Littleton, Colo.

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Alumna Stars in Reality Show

Afi Ekulona ‘99 made it to the second round before being ousted from the ABC reality show “The Mole.”

Ekulona, who studied pre-med at CC and graduated with a degree in neuroscience, was one of 10 contestants on the game show in which one person could win up to $1 million. Each week the contestants traveled the globe, enduring several challenges that accrue money toward the top prize. One of the contestants secretly tries to sabotage the challengers.

In the first week, Ekulona, who works at Colorado Springs’ El Pomar Foundation, was featured prominently, playing a key role in a memory game that earned the contestants several thousand dollars.

-- The Colorado Springs Gazette

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Professor Bids Adieu

Colleagues and friends gathered to salute retiring French professor Pete Peterson. A member of the department since 1961 and a full professor since 1970, Peterson is a specialist in Dada and author of four books. His research on the literature of Quebec resulted in a book of poetry, beautifully printed by Jim Trissel and The Press at Colorado College.

Peterson has a bachelor’s degree from Carlton College, a master’s degree from Middlebury College, and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado. He served as director of development at CC from 1978 to 1980, and dean of the Summer Session from 1982 to 1987.

Retirement years will be spent writing, “and losing graciously with my wife at tennis every Saturday morning to Doug Freed and whomever he chooses as a partner.”

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A Trip Back in Time

On Jan. 1, 2001, 300 history buffs gathered in Tutt Library for the opening of the Colorado Springs Century Chest. The steel-riveted chest contained more than 150 envelopes and packages filled with hundreds of individual letters, pamphlets, clippings and photographs.

The opening of the time capsule stirred great interest with media across the country and abroad. Digital images of the letters and photographs can be viewed online.

The Century Chest Planning Committee has solicited essays from different community sectors and resealed the chest in April for residents of the 22nd century.

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Duo Piano Team Wows Audience

Artist-in-residence Susan Grace and Denver University’s Alice Rybak, performing together as Quattro Mani, received a standing ovation from a sold-out crowd at Carnegie’s Recital Hall in January. Later, the two pianists enjoyed a champagne reception organized by Anne Yeckley ’90.

The duo’s first CD, “A Game of Go” released by Klavier Music Productions, was recently featured by Tower Records in its new release display. A second CD, due in March, will contain two-piano works by Pulitizer Prize winner George Crumb.

Quattro Mani has been invited to return to the famed recital hall for the 2001-02 season.

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