Posts tagged award
CU names McPhee for Stegner award
Oct 12th
AUTHOR JOHN MCPHEE TO RECEIVE STEGNER AWARD
FROM CU’S CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST ON OCT. 27
FROM CU’S CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST ON OCT. 27
John McPhee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Encounters With the Archdruid” and “Coming Into the Country,” will receive the Wallace Stegner Award from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center of the American West on Oct. 27.
The center’s highest award will be presented at a 7 p.m. event in the Old Main Chapel on the CU-Boulder campus. The evening will feature a discussion with Mc
arch typical Druid
Phee conducted by Patty Limerick, professor of history and chair and faculty director of the Center of the American West, and Charles Wilkinson, d
The event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited and people are encouraged to arrive early.istinguished professor and Moses Lasky Professor of Law at CU-Boulder.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of McPhee’s “Encounters With the Archdruid,” a book Limerick has long heralded as the Center of the American West’s “founding text” because of its inspiring demonstration of civil dialogue on contentious issues. McPhee also is the author of “Basin and Range” (1981), “In Suspect Terrain” (1983), “Rising from the Plains” (1986), “The Control of Nature” (1989) and “Assembling California” (1993).
“Each time I have assigned to a class, I take great pleasure in reading it again,” said Limerick. “Since I assign it in nearly every course I teach, that means I may be coming up on my 50th reading of it. If there is anyone who cares about the West but who has not read this book, it’s time to take action.”
Each year, the Center of the American West presents the Wallace Stegner Award to an individual who has made a sustained contribution to the cultural identity of the West through literature, art, history, or lore of the West. Past recipients include Tom McGuane, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ivan Doig, John Echohawk, Billy Frank, Terry Tempest Williams, John Nichols, Vine Deloria Jr., Ted Turner and many more. This year’s award was made possible by Alan and Carol Ann Olson.
CU-Boulder’s Center of the American West addresses a variety of regional issues, including water management, relationships between federal agencies and communities and economies, land planning, Native American identity, recent art and literature, and the balance of power between tradition and innovation in Western life. The center takes as its mission the creation of forums for the respectful exchange of ideas in pursuit of solutions to the region’s difficulties.
For more information visit the Center of the American West’s website at http://www.centerwest.org or call 303-492-4879.
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Boulder bike park a winner!
Oct 12th
Parks and Recreation Department wins 2011 Colorado Parks and Recreation Association award for Valmont Bike Park
The City of Boulder’s Parks and Recreation Department was awarded the 2011 Colorado Parks and Recreation Association (CPRA) Columbine Award for Recreation Facility Design at Valmont Bike Park. The award was presented to Parks and Recreation Director Kirk Kincannon and Recreation Superintendent Alice Guthrie on Thursday, Sept. 29, at the CPRA Annual Conference in Grand Junction.
“This is a great honor for the City of Boulder Parks and Recreation Department,” said Kincannon. “Valmont Bike Park was designed and constructed with the community in mind. Through our extensive public input process, we were able to create a park that appeals to all levels of cyclists and provides a great recreation facility for families. We are thrilled to have this community treasure recognized by the Colorado Parks and Recreation Association.”
The opening of Valmont Bike Park in June 2011 was the culmination of a multi-year collaboration between the community and Boulder Parks and Recreation Department. A 40-acre, natural-surface bike park, Valmont was designed and developed in partnership with the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance (BMA), a group representing the area’s active, off-road cycling community. BMA brought volunteers, funding and sport-specific expertise to this ambitious project. BMA also agreed to help with fundraising and long-term stewardship of the bike facility and formed a partnership with the PLAY Boulder Parks Foundation as a mechanism to receive tax-deductible donations.
The park offers trails and features for all ages, riding abilities and styles. It also incorporates the latest sustainable design features including water conservation systems; LEEDTM certified building design, solar photovoltaic power and wildlife-proof recycling and trash containers.
The addition of the park and completion of multi-use trails leading to it elevated Boulder’s League of American Bicyclists’ status from gold to one of only three, Platinum-level bike friendly communities in the U.S. Valmont Bike Park provides new recreation opportunities for the community and competitive venues for local, national and international events.
CU Boulder FACULTY LEAD $7 MILLION INITIATIVE AIMED AT MILITARY VEHICLE SAFETY
Aug 11th
Aug. 11, 2011
University of Colorado Boulder engineering faculty are leading a $7.2 million multidisciplinary research initiative on soil blast modeling and simulation for the U.S. Department of Defense.
The research, which starts this month, is aimed at creating a more accurate representation of the impact of buried landmines and improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, on light-armored military vehicles so that the vehicles can be better designed to withstand such blasts.
The award is administered by the Office of Naval Research as part of the defense department’s competitive Multi-University Research Initiative or MURI program, which supports basic science and engineering research at U.S.universities related to long-term national security needs.
MURI awards are provided to accelerate progress in cutting-edge research areas by supporting multidisciplinary teams with larger and longer awards than other DOD research programs.
The grant will provide $4.2 million to CU-Boulder and $3 million to co-investigators at four other institutions. The other schools involved are the University of California, Berkeley; University of Texas at Dallas; University of Tennessee Knoxville; and the University of Utah.
Richard Regueiro, assistant professor in CU-Boulder’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, is the principal investigator. CU-Boulder professors Ronald Pak, John McCartney and Stein Sture of civil engineering, and Oleg Vasilyev of mechanical engineering, also areinvolved.
The research initiative will involve experiments using CU-Boulder’s large 400-g ton geotechnical centrifuge coupled with computational modeling. The objective is to develop and validate a model that accurately represents explosive blasts of varying charges, depths and soil types.
CU-Boulder’s proposal was one of 27 MURI awards made to academic institutions in different topical areas in 2011. The proposals, which are being funded with a total of $191 million over five years, were selected from a field of 332 proposals, including 17 on the topic of soil blast modeling and simulation.
