CU News
News from the University of Colorado in Boulder.
2012 CU Diversity and Inclusion Summit invites participants to ‘Amp it up’
Nov 5th
The University of Colorado Boulder’s annual Diversity and Inclusion Summit will feature a variety of sessions for students, faculty, staff and community members from Nov. 13-15. All events are free, open to the public and on the Boulder campus.
The organizing theme for this year’s summit is “AMP it up! Awareness, Movement and Practice.” Along with sessions on awareness, inclusiveness and classroom and campus diversity practice, a selection of events will focus on the physical embodiment of diversity. These sessions will include dance, martial arts, yoga and theater as physical opportunities to discuss and engage with diversity. Sessions with a focus on pedagogical best practices for inclusive classrooms are another highlight of this year’s summit.
“The planning committee has been a model of the kind of cooperation that Chancellor DiStefano recently called for in his State of the Campus address,” said Alphonse Keasley, CU-Boulder’s assistant vice chancellor for campus climate and community engagement. “The members have worked tirelessly to organize a summit that speaks to this year’s theme, ‘AMP it up! Awareness, Movement and Practice.’ We sincerely hope and expect that participants will gain much from the sessions for truly amping it up for diversity, inclusion and social justice.”
Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, returns to the summit and will share her new research in the keynote address “Using Privilege as a Catalyst for Change” on Tuesday, Nov. 13, at 9:15 a.m. in the University Memorial Center’s Glenn Miller Ballroom. McIntosh is best known for her essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” and last spoke in association with the summit in 2009, and on the Boulder campus in 2001.
Highlighted sessions during this year’s summit include:
— Tuesday, Nov. 13, 12:30 p.m., UMC Glenn Miller Ballroom.
“When Green Means Money: Economic Diversity in Boulder,” presented by Boulder City Manager Jane Brautigam.
— Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2 p.m., UMC Glenn Miller Ballroom.
Plenary: “Efficiency vs. Effectiveness: Recognizing the Difference for Low Income and First Generation Students” presented by Valerie Embry, director of the Academic Excellence Student Support Services Program.
— Wednesday, Nov. 14, 9 a.m., UMC Glenn Miller Ballroom.
Plenary: “Class, Race and Immigration in Higher Education” presented by CU-Boulder professors Melissa Hart and Ming Chen.
The educational and exploratory sessions highlight the research, talents and insights of faculty, students and staff and offer a view of diversity beyond the most common definitions. The event is hosted by the CU-Boulder Office of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement, the Chancellor’s Advisory Committees and the city of Boulder.
The Diversity and Inclusion Summit shares the most current and up-to-date best practices around matters of diversity, inclusion, equity and social justice. As a public forum, the summit provides content to inspire new members of the campus community and to sustain veteran campus members toward a greater pluralistic campus, introduce everyday skills and practices for fostering an inclusive campus and work environment, and advance the skill set of long-term practitioners of diversity, inclusion and social justice.
A complete schedule of diversity summit events is available in the CU-Boulder Events Calendar at http://tinyurl.com/CUDiversitySummit2012.
CU Boulder researchers uncover new target for cancer research
Oct 25th
In a new paper released today in Nature, BioFrontiers Institute scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder, Tom Cech and Leslie Leinwand, detailed a new target for anti-cancer drug development that is sitting at the ends of our DNA.
Researchers in the two scientists’ laboratories collaborated to find a patch of amino acids that, if blocked by a drug docked onto the chromosome end at this location, may prevent cancerous cells from reproducing. The amino acids at this site are called the “TEL patch” and once modified, the end of the chromosome is unable to recruit the telomerase enzyme, which is necessary for growth of many cancerous cells.
“This is an exciting scientific discovery that gives us a new way of looking at the problem of cancer,” Cech said. “What is amazing is that changing a single amino acid in the TEL patch stops the growth of telomeres. We are a long way from a drug solution for cancer, but this discovery gives us a different, and hopefully more effective, target.”
Nobel Prize winner Tom Cech
Cech is the director of the BioFrontiers Institute, a Howard Hughes Medical Investigator and winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Co-authors on the study include postdoctoral fellows Jayakrishnan Nandakumar and Ina Weidenfeld; University of Colorado undergraduate student Caitlin Bell; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Senior Scientist Arthur Zaug.
Telomeres have been studied since the 1970s for their role in cancer. They are constructed of repetitive nucleotide sequences that sit at the ends of our chromosomes like the ribbon tails on a bow. This extra material protects the ends of the chromosomes from deteriorating, or fusing with neighboring chromosome ends. Telomeres are consumed during cell division and, over time, will become shorter and provide less cover for the chromosomes they are protecting. An enzyme called telomerase replenishes telomeres throughout their lifecycles.
Telomerase is the enzyme that keeps cells young. From stem cells to germ cells, telomerase helps cells continue to live and multiply. Too little telomerase produces diseases of bone marrow, lungs and skin. Too much telomerase results in cells that over proliferate and may become “immortal.” As these immortal cells continue to divide and replenish, they build cancerous tumors. Scientists estimate that telomerase activation is a contributor in up to 90 percent of human cancers.
To date, development of cancer therapies has focused on limiting the enzymatic action of telomerase to slow the growth of cancerous cells. With their latest discovery, Cech and Leinwand envision a cancer drug that would lock into the TEL patch at chromosome ends to keep telomerase from binding there. This approach of inhibiting the docking of telomerase may be the elegant solution to the complex problem of cancerous cells. Cech, a biochemist, and Leinwand, a biologist, joined forces to work on their latest solution.
“This work was really made possible by the fact that our labs are so close,” Leinwand said. “My lab was able to provide the cell biology and understanding of genetics, and Tom’s lab allowed us to explore the biochemistry. We have a unique situation at BioFrontiers where labs and people comingle to make discoveries just like this.”
Leinwand is the chief scientific officer of the BioFrontiers Institute and a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology.
Researchers at the University of Colorado have a significant history in developing marketable biotechnologies. Cech founded Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals Inc. Leinwand co-founded Myogen with CU professor Michael Bristow, Hiberna and recently launched MyoKardia (http://www.myokardia.com/about.php).
The BioFrontiers Institute is an interdisciplinary institute housed at the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building at CU-Boulder. The institute is dedicated to training the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists through its IQ Biology Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology Ph.D. program. For more information about BioFrontiers visithttp://biofrontiers.colorado.edu
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CU Boulder study finds racial ‘hierarchy of bias’ drives decision to shoot armed, unarmed suspects
Oct 24th
Police officers and students exhibit an apparent “hierarchy of bias” in making a split-second decision whether to shoot suspects who appear to be wielding a gun or, alternatively, a benign object like a cell phone, research conducted by the University of Colorado Boulder and San Diego State University has found.
Both the police and student subjects were most likely to shoot at blacks, then Hispanics, then whites and finally, in a case of what might be called a positive bias, Asians, researchers found.
In the first study of its kind, Joshua Correll, Bernadette Park and Charles M. Judd of CU-Boulder’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Melody Sadler of San Diego State University examined how police and a group of undergraduate subjects decide whether to shoot or not to shoot “suspects” in a multi-ethnic environment.
“Most studies on the subject of stereotyping and prejudice look at two (ethnic) groups, usually in isolation. It’s always one group against another group,” said Correll, a CU graduate who joined the faculty in August after a stint at the University of Chicago.
“But as the country becomes more ethnically diverse, it’s more and more important to start thinking about how we process racial and ethnic cues in a multicultural environment,” he said.
As with previous studies into the question, data were gathered from subjects playing a “first person shooter” video game, in which figures of varying ethnicity — Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic and African-American — pop up, either “armed” with a weapon or another benign object, such as a cell phone.
Participants — 69 CU-Boulder undergraduates and 254 police officers — had to make quick decisions as to which figures posed a “threat” and shoot them. The police officers were recruited from two-day training seminars in Florida, New Mexico and Washington and represented numerous jurisdictions from 11 states.
The research demonstrates how persistent cultural stereotypes are, Correll said. Even students who displayed little bias when interviewed demonstrated otherwise when faced with a split-second decision.
“I may not believe it personally, but I am exposed to stereotypes constantly through media or social networks … (such as) the idea that young black men are dangerous,” he said. “Those associations can have an influence on my behavior even if I don’t believe them.”
The study found that police were considerably more accurate than students at correctly identifying a genuinely threatening suspect, as opposed to those brandishing a cell phone or wallet, perhaps a reflection of training. But officers were still influenced by the target’s race — an influence that may derive from the officers’ “contacts, attitudes and stereotypes,” Correll said.
For example, police who endorsed more violent stereotypes about Hispanics and those who overestimated the prevalence of violent crime in their districts demonstrated more bias to shoot Hispanic targets. That raises the question of whether police are responding to real-world threats — and whether that means some ethnic groups really are more likely to be armed and dangerous than others.
“That is a very sensitive question, whether or not (police officers’) reactions are based on some kind of truth. Is this police officers responding to reality on the ground? The short answer is, we don’t know,” Correll said. “But this research almost demands that we ask that question.”
The researchers’ recent findings were published in the Journal of Social Issues. The work was funded by a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation.
In 2007, Correll (then at the University of Chicago), Sadler (then at CU-Boulder), Park and Judd collaborated with the Denver Police Department on a widely cited study that found police officers were less influenced than the general public by racial bias and less likely than the general population to make a decision to shoot at African-American suspects wielding a benign object.
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