Colorado College Bulletin

Home Page

HOME PAGE features a series of brief articles on recent happenings at Colorado College. This issue includes stories on a collaborative art project, Alison Dunlap, new student orientation, remembering Freedom and Authority, and an alumnus who was recently nominated for a diplomatic post.

Photo by Tom KimmellFaculty, Students Collaborate on Art Project

By MARSHALL KEAN

Craig Muderlak ’02 gingerly applies fragile gold leaf sheets with his fingers to small holes on a wide horizontal panel.  Co-worker Kat Hodges ’01 mounts a tall stepladder and, with considerably less delicacy, paints a wide area on a vertical panel using a household broom as a brush.  Both work under the watchful supervision and direction of art professor, Kate Leonard, who hired them for this large-scale public art commission. 

Collaborative professional projects involving faculty and students are fairly common in the sciences, but relatively rare in the arts.  Not true, however, with Leonard, who has hired students for various projects since she was in graduate school.  When Leonard learned her mixed media, low relief submission was selected by the Art in Public Places program of Colorado, she gathered several CC student associates to help.  They began work in the art studio shop the day after May’s commencement, working with feverish determination to complete the project by August.  

Since arriving at CC in 1994, Leonard, who currently serves as department chair, has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally.  Having previously completed other public art pieces, this is her largest work, a huge three panel atrium design for the new Center for Technology and Learning Media at Colorado School of Mines in Golden.  Budgeted at more than $70,000, the panels are hand-painted with integrated large-scale digital lithographs.  The entire piece addresses three main topics:  the connections between nature and scientific inspiration, the relationship between pure and applied sciences, and the consequences of the values we embody as manifested on the landscape. 

Leonard selected her student associates as she would “a good brush”, for their various personal skills.  In addition to Muderlak and Hodges, she hired Dave Begay ’01 for gilding, Brian Sohn ’01 for computer-generated imagery, and Colin Frazer ’02 for construction and installation.  Art shop supervisor William Jeavons designed and constructed the frames and modular panels. 

Each full panel stands 20 feet wide and is mounted on a high atrium wall above the floor.  The installation required a full crew and much logistical planning for delivery and mounting.  Muderlak later quipped that he could now add “hydraulic lift operator” to his resume.

Back to top

World Champ!

Olympian Alison Dunlap '91 won the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Vail on September 16.Alison Dunlap '91

As I came into the finishing stretch, a fan held out an American Flag.  I grabbed it and rode across the finish line with the flag in my right hand and tears streaming down my fact.  I immediately got off my bike, kneeled down and kissed the ground.  For a few minutes I got to know what it was like to be a big movie star.  Cameras everywhere,  people talking from all directions.  It was crazy.

Coming back from drug testing, I ran into lots of friends and family and fans wanting autographs and pictures.  Took me almost an hour to walk what normally takes five minutes.

When they played the national anthem, it was such an emotional moment, one I have dreamed about for years.

Having my friends and family at the race made the day all the more special.  And after everything that happened with the terrorist attacks that week, it was good to finally have something to be proud of, something to cheer about, and something that made you feel glad to be an American, and glad to be alive.

Back to Top

Oriented to Succeed

By Marco R. della Cava '84/USA Today

Twenty-one years ago, I stepped off a Greyhound bus here, suitcases bulging with soccer gear, clothes, homemade cassettes and a boom box, a bona fide stranger in a strange land.

  By enrolling at Colorado College, the familiar vanished. I said ''Den-vuh'' and they said ''Din-ver,'' and the differences rolled on from there like the plains that stretched east from campus to Kansas. I had traded sea-level New York City for the Rockies' mile-high Front Range. Dense waves of humanity for wide-open spaces. Sneakers for boots.

  My freshman ''orientation,'' such as it was, consisted of orienting myself to a) soccer practice b) the dorm c) my classes. Sink or swim. Thanks in large part to my teammates, I eventually formed a fierce bond with the college. But other students never found their glue, and left.

Flash-forward to last week. I returned to the scene of my youth to find freshmen being hailed like homecoming heroes. Parties under big white tents. Professors radiating goodwill. A ''welcome'' booklet crammed with 42 events over five days. Orientation? Try the mother of all campus love-ins.

While small liberal-arts colleges have played with touchy-feely orientation programs for decades, the movement has found broad support in the past few years.  At schools ranging from Brown University in Rhode Island to Pacific University in Oregon, you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish the newfangled orientation from a summer camp. Kayaking, model making, rock climbing, paintball contests and the popular overnight backpacking getaway are but a few ways in which freshmen are urged to insta-click with their new surroundings.

Colorado College, or simply CC, where classes started Labor Day, always had a family-run feel, thanks in part to its size, still hovering at just under 2,000 students. But the family has become a bit more demanding of late: If the message to CC freshmen in 1980 was ''We're here if you need us,'' the new slogan might be ''Consider yourself booked solid.''  

Milling around the main quad before orientation's first mass gathering at a debate, this year's class of 500 newbies looks casual (lots of sandals, shorts and piercings) but nervous.  

The debate features disturbingly eloquent (for their age) upperclassmen tackling the question of whether a society focused on the individual is bad. It actually does get people talking -- about how prodding strangers into a ponderous debate is a bad way to get acquainted. 

''It was too early in the morning,'' says Megan Krell, 18, of Vashon Island, Wash. ''It certainly didn't make me want to get up and participate.'' 

But Krell is plenty vocal now. She is surrounded by a dozen other freshmen who will be her classmates this fall in a course called ''Freedom & Authority'' taught by English professor John Simons.

For nearly two hours, teacher and students get acquainted under the guise of dissecting a mandatory reading assignment, A Father's Story by Andre Dubus. The talk is open and lively, with almost everyone in the fray.

Days before classes start, friendships are being formed. Nerves are being calmed. Well, maybe not all of them. ''I feel overbooked,'' says Alana Tutt, 18, of Fort Collins, Colo. ''It's like I'm supposed to be somewhere every minute.''  This minute, Tutt is supposed to be at the campus theater to watch ''The Colors of CC: All About the Student Life Scene.'' It includes a dancing tiger mascot, a chat about diversity and learning the school song.  Meanwhile, across campus, parents are jammed into a seminar called ''Letting Go.'' As they file in, each grabs bottled water, fresh fruit and packets of tissues. 

Both events end by midafternoon, but students find they still have five other items on their docket, ranging from a class photo to a dance recital. The night is capped off by a party thrown by students living in the Substance-Free Theme House (non-existent in 1980). 

''Today's freshmen are very success-oriented,'' professor Simons says. ''Not that the freshmen back in 1980 weren't sharp, but these kids really like structure, they like working cooperatively, and we have to provide them those opportunities as early as possible.''

About half the incoming class has signed up for Streetwise, a program that calls for freshmen to donate four hours of their time to a local organization. Milling under gathering rain clouds, the students all sport black Streetwise T-shirts and enjoy the connection of a common cause.   While one group heads for a ''dog wash'' at an animal shelter, another sets off on foot toward Zach's Place, a day-care center for mentally disabled kids. There, helping make a picture book for Brian Jenkins, an autistic 18-year-old, is freshman Amelia Dickerson, 18, of Denver. Lying at her feet is a black Lab, her seeing-eye dog, Kazie.

''All summer I was terrified, fearing that everyone would know each other and I wouldn't know anyone,'' she says with a smile. ''But these days have been great. I realized that no one knew anyone either.''

Maybe it's the fog of age, but what struck me instantly about today's freshmen was how eager they were to push through the awkwardness of trading the comforts of home and high school for the dizzying smorgasbord that is college.

Bring it on! they seem to shout, almost as if they can see the challenges that loom in the adult world ahead. 

So, administrators roll out camping trips, skits, debates and just about any other interactive set piece to reassure them that the coming years will be a team effort and that help is never far away. Not bad as messages go. 

From the wistful Class of 1984 to the ambitious Class of 2005: Here's looking at you, kids.

Reprinted with permission of USA Today 

Back to top

The Quintessential Liberal Arts Course

By MOLLY WINGATE

Shakespeare. Plato. Calculus. These courses have been in the curriculum of liberal arts colleges for generations. While CC has always offered these, it has also offered a course with a different spin on a liberal arts education -- Freedom and Authority. The course revolves around the quintessentially liberal arts questions, “What do I think and believe? And why? ” “What is the balance between individual freedom and religious, social and political authority?” Rather than look through the lens of one discipline, Freedom and Authority looks through several. First taught in 1951, it was the first interdisciplinary course on campus -- and perhaps in the country. Taught in all divisions for 50 years, Freedom and Authority has become a vital tradition at CC.  

Introduced during the McCarthy era -- a tense time on college campuses nationwide -- the course was the brainchild of Lloyd E. Worner of the history department, George McCue of the English department, and Glenn Gray of the philosophy department. It was designed as a two semester synthesis of knowledge, meshing, for example, philosophical works by Plato, great literature by Goethe with social tomes like Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd. Freedom and Authority’s founding fathers each taught a section of the course, using a reading list selected from the different disciplines. The seminar format encouraged mutual learning between the instructors and the students.

The interdisciplinary nature of the course precipitated another long-standing tradition at CC -- weekly Freedom and Authority faculty lunches. Bill Hochman, professor of history emeritus, initiated these lunch discussions when he joined the college in 1955. “I was an ignorant history Ph.D. I had never heard of some of texts on the reading list. The course was the beginning of my mature education.” Faculty who teach or have taught Freedom and Authority still gather for lunch every Tuesday at noon. 

The tradition of discussing classic books and current issues spilled over into Homecoming. Every year since 1959, alumni have attended Freedom and Authority reunions. At first, 14 gathered. Today, more than 200 meet to discuss the eternal questions of living. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Freedom and Authority hosted special events at Homecoming this year, including a panel discussion on reflections and recollections. 

By all accounts, the homecoming discussions are lively. “Alumni love the chance to have an intellectual discussion about something they have read. They seem to thrive on it, ” said Bill Davis of the comparative literature department, who has coordinated Freedom and Authority since 1995. “I want to say to students in class, ‘Someday you will be excited to have the chance to discuss an assigned reading, and you will travel great distances to do it, too!’”  

An organic enterprise, Freedom and Authority has constantly changed over the years to reflect the current interests of faculty and students. In 1993, Freedom and Authority evolved into First-Year Seminars. Conceived as an appropriate introduction to liberal learning at CC, classes debate interesting books, films and articles in “free-swinging discussions,” says Hochman.

And in the fall of 2000, Freedom and Authority became part of the First Year Experience program, a two-block set of linked courses that focuses on a central theme and emphasizes critical reading, writing and research.  

Yet, even after 50 years, Freedom and Authority remains relevant.  There’s nothing quite as inspiring in today’s troubled times as an open exchange on the importance of freedom.  

The former director of CC’s Writing Center, Molly Wingate recently started her own consulting business. She can be reached at Molly@Wingate-Consulting.com

Back to top  

Hybl Nominated for Diplomatic Post

President George W. Bush has nominated William J. Hybl '64 to be United States Representative to the General Assembly of the United Nations.  Hybl is chairman and chief executive officer of El Pomar Foundation, one of the leading private philanthropic foundations in the Rocky Mountain West, where he has served since 1973.  In addition, he is president emeritus of the United States Olympic Committee from 1991 to 1992 and again from 1996 to 2000, presiding over four Olympic Games.

Hybl is one of three U.S. delegates who are joining representatives of 189 other nations in the 56th General Assembly, the United Nations' main deliberative body."  At this trying and difficult time in our nation's history, it becomes even more important to work with the nation of the world in seeking common resolution," stated Hybl of his new United Nations role.  The assembly's decisions are not legally binding on governments but are considered influential.  Hybl's position is a diplomatic post, requiring him to be in New York City throughout the 56th General Assembly beginning in September.  The length of the session is contingent upon international activities.  Hybl will commute between Colorado and New York, maintaining his roles at El Pomar, as vice chairman of the Broadmoor Hotel, and as International Olympic Committee member.

Hybl served as special counsel to President Reagan in 1981 and was elected to the Colorado House of Representatives in 1972.  HE served as vice chairman of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy from 1990 to 1997 and as Rocky Mountain Panel Chair for the White House Fellowship Program from 1986 to 1990.  In addition to CC, Hybl is a graduate of the University of Colorado Law School.

Back to Index