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Boulder war Hero New CU Army ROTC Commander Served three tours in Iraq
Sep 8th
In 2003, shortly after arriving in Iraq, an anti-tank mine blew off Army Maj. David Rozelle’s right foot and part of his leg below the knee. Today, after three combat tours in Iraq — two of which came after his injury — Rozelle is the new commanding officer of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Army ROTC program.
“I couldn’t imagine doing anything else right now,” Rozelle said. “I love training soldiers and being with soldiers, especially these young leaders here at CU who are going to be great officers.”
Rozelle’s introduction to the Army began as an ROTC cadet at Davidson College in North Carolina, where he graduated in 1995. After his commissioning, Rozelle served in a number of armor and cavalry assignments before 2001 when he received his orders to report to Fort Carson in Colorado Springs for his first day of duty with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
“9/11 is a special day for me, it’s the day I reported for duty at Fort Carson,” Rozelle said. “A decade later, I’ve gone to war, had my leg blown off, recovered, went back to war a second and third time, and now have come to the University of Colorado to lead and train some of the best officers in the Army. The last 10 years have been a heck of a ride.”
Rozelle started at CU-Boulder in May of this year.
After his 2003 injury, Rozelle was determined not to let the wound define him, and instead vowed to return to service in Iraq. Once his wound healed, he dove into rehabilitation and was fitted with an artificial foot and leg that he wears today. Not only can he walk and run but he also returned to his favorite sport, skiing, just months after his injury. He also returned to Iraq for two additional tours.
“I didn’t let that landmine injury define me, I made it so my recovery from the landmine injury and my return to war was what defined me,” he said.
When it comes to his injury, Rozelle said not only are his students interested, but they’re infatuated with it.
“One of the things I learned eight years ago when I went back to my unit and served again in Iraq was that without meaning to, I was inspiring everybody around me,” he said. “When the cadets are out running and they see me running with them, it’s definitely clear that I’m not going to let them lag behind. It is a motivation for the kids.
“At the same time, it’s also a reminder of the reality of war. I can tell them stories of war because I’ve been there. I’m the old salty pirate back from the sea, missing a leg, so they pay attention.”
Not only did 9/11 and the wars that followed change the way we fight wars, it also changed the way the Army thinks and the way it trains, according to Rozelle.
“Before 9/11 officers in training went into the Army with basic core skills and then the Army provided the on-the-job training,” he said. “After 9/11, your on-the-job training is in Iraq or Afghanistan, so we have to compress a lot more training here in the ROTC phase. The reality is we need leaders now, there’s no time to make them after they graduate.”
One area Rozelle hammers home with his students is the need to develop critical thinking and decision-making skills — skills they will use every day as an officer.
“I also require my soldiers to journal, because they have to be able to accurately record activities in the field, things they saw that were good or bad, so they can remember them and learn from them,” he said.
Rozelle wrote about his experiences in a 2005 book titled “Back in Action: An American Soldier’s Story of Courage, Faith and Fortitude.”
Rozelle will be recognized as a veteran of the Iraq War during the CU vs. Cal-Berkeley football game on Saturday, Sept. 10.
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Parking enforcement to be increased at Hessie Trailhead
Aug 25th
Boulder County, Colo. – The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office and Transportation Department will be enforcing parking restrictions beginning this weekend at the Hessie Trailhead on Fourth of July Road (County Road 111) west of the town of Eldora.
Weekend congestion near the trailhead and along the road has resulted in gridlock and created unsafe conditions for residents and visitors. As a result of the number of vehicles and people attempting to navigate through the area, it would be impossible for an emergency vehicle to get from Eldora to the trailhead in a timely manner.
Watch video of traffic congestion.
“This is major safety issue that needs to be addressed right away,” Boulder County Transportation Director George Gerstle said. “There is very limited parking and it is important to keep the road clear so people can recreate safely and access is maintained for emergency responders.”
Parking is also discouraged in the town of Eldora. Visitors are encouraged to carpool or visit other locations during the remaining busy summer weekends.
CU-BOULDER FACULTY, STUDENTS PART OF NASA’S JUNO MISSION TO JUPITER
Aug 1st
Several University of Colorado Boulder faculty and students are participating in NASA’s Juno Mission to Jupiter, now slated for launch Aug. 5 from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center and which is expected to help steer scientists toward the right recipe for planet-making.
The primary goal of the mission is to understand the origin and evolution of the massive gas planet, said CU-Boulder Professor Fran Bagenal of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, a mission co-investigator. The data should reveal not only the conditions of the early solar system, but also help scientists to better understand the hundreds of planetary systems recently discovered around other stars, she said.
After the sun formed, Jupiter got the majority of the “leftovers,” said Juno Mission principal investigator Scott Bolton from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Since Jupiter has a larger mass than all of the other planets in the solar system combined, scientists believe it holds the keys to understanding how the planets formed and why some are rocky and others are gas giants, Bagenal said.
Once Juno reaches Jupiter orbit in 2016 after a 400-million-mile trip, the spacecraft will orbit the planet’s poles 33 times, skimming roughly 3,000 miles above the cloud tops in a region below Jupiter’s powerful radiation belts. While the spacecraft itself is about the size of a Volkswagen and encased in a protective radiation vault, its three solar panels that will unfurl in space will make the spinning spacecraft more than 65 feet in diameter.
Bagenal said scientists were continually surprised by the data beamed back from NASA’s Galileo mission to Jupiter, which arrived at the planet in 1995 and carried 16 instruments, including two developed by CU-Boulder’s LASP. Among other discoveries, Galileo scientists identified the global structure and dynamics of the planet’s magnetic activity, confirmed the presence of ammonia clouds in its atmosphere and discovered that one of its moons, Europa, has a global ocean beneath a thick crust of ice.
“One of the biggest questions left after the Galileo mission was how much water there is in Jupiter’s atmosphere,” said Bagenal. “The amount of water is key, because water played a huge role in the formation of the solar system.” Bagenal also is a professor in the astrophysical and planetary sciences department.
“Most of us know that water absorbs microwaves, because that is what happens when you put a cup of tea in your microwave oven,” said Bagenal. “We are going to be using a microwave detector and fly just over the clouds of Jupiter, looking down at different cloud depths to measure the amounts of water below. It’s a bit like doing a CT scan of Jupiter’s dense clouds.”
Bagenal’s role in the mission is to coordinate observations of Jupiter’s magnetosphere –the area of space around the planet that is controlled by its magnetic field. She and her collaborators are especially interested in understanding the processes that control auroral activity at the planet’s poles — its northern and southern lights — and assess the roles of the planet’s strong magnetic field on its surroundings.
In addition to collaborating closely with the Juno science team, Bagenal is working with CU-Boulder Professor Robert Ergun of LASP, who has extensively studied Earth’s magnetosphere and associated polar auroras. Ergun will use his expertise in auroral physics as part of the mission to compare the physical processes at Jupiter with those seen on Earth.
“This will be the first time anyone has flown over the poles of Jupiter to look directly down on the aurora,” said Bagenal. “We will be flying the spacecraft through regions where charged particles are accelerated to the point of bombarding the atmosphere of Jupiter hard enough to make it glow at the poles.”
Bagenal also is working with LASP Research Associate Peter Delomere on the Jovian magnetosphere studies and with physics department graduate student Mariel Desroche, who is modeling the outer region of Jupiter’s magnetosphere as part of the Juno effort.
CU-Boulder senior Dinesh Costlow of the astrophysical and planetary sciences department also is collaborating with Bagenal and the Juno science team by using computer models to simulate the trajectory of the spacecraft through all 33 individual orbits as it passes through Jupiter’s magnetosphere. “We are interested in finding the optimal places in orbit to point the spacecraft for our data collection,” he said.
Costlow, who is from Auburn, Maine, said he knew CU-Boulder had a good astronomy program before he ever set foot on campus. “Everything fell into place, and I feel very lucky to have an opportunity to work on this mission,” Costlow said. “I think graduate school may be my next step, and after that maybe I can make a career out of this kind of planetary research.”
By mapping Jupiter’s gravitational and magnetic fields, mission scientists should be able to see the planet’s interior structure and determine if it has a rocky iron core — a core that some scientists believe could be 15 or 20 times the size of Earth. But because of the immense pressure in the Jovian atmosphere, any spacecraft seeking the core would be crushed long before it neared the middle of the planet, much as the Galileo spacecraft was crushed after it was crashed into the planet’s clouds after the mission concluded in 2003.
“My biggest hope is that all of our predictions about Jupiter are wrong, and that we find something completely different than what we expect,” said Bagenal. “When our preconceived notions are off, it shows us we can never become complacent. New data from the solar system’s planets keeps us excited enough to re-visit them to learn more about the history and fate of our solar system.”
The Juno spacecraft is carrying 11 experiments to probe the planet’s mass, magnetic field, charged particles, auroras, plasma, radio waves, thermal and ultraviolet emissions, and includes a camera to provide images of the colorful Jovian cloud tops. The Juno Mission is being managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company of Denver built the spacecraft, which will be launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
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