CU-Boulder: Highlights of 2015

In 2015, members of CU-Boulder's community again stood out by winning prestigious prizes such as the Pulitzer, getting up close and personal with Pluto and hosting high profile events that attracted attention around the globe to our beautiful Boulder campus.

New Horizons spacecraft phones home from Pluto

A NASA spacecraft carrying an instrument built by CU-Boulder students finally whizzed past Pluto after a historic nine-year journey of more than 3 billion miles. The Student Dust Counter is helping researchers better understand the evolution of our solar system and likely other solar systems scattered throughout the universe.

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History professor wins Pulitzer Prize

Elizabeth Fenn, chair of the CU-Boulder history department, spent a decade researching the Plains Indian tribe known as the Mandan people for her book Encounters at the Heart of the World: A History of the Mandan People, which won her the Pulitzer Prize in history. Not one to rest on her laurels, Fenn is now researching an expansive biography of Sakagawea.

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RNC candidates come to town

CU-Boulder attracted global media exposure of an unprecedented nature for hosting the third Republican presidential debate of the 2016 election cycle. More than 14 million people watched the debate on CNBC. While 100 students attended the debate and more served in volunteer roles, the lack of additional tickets activated other students to launch Student Voices Count.

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13,000-year-old stone tools unveiled on campus

A breathtaking cache of Ice Age-era stone tools unearthed within Boulder city limits in 2008 publicly debuted at the University of Colorado Museum, drawing large crowds eager to view the ancient blades. Research suggests that the cache traveled from northeast Utah to the Front Range via nomadic hunter-gatherers.

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Jane Goodall gets rock star treatment on campus

Jane Goodall fans from Boulder and beyond quickly snapped up all available free tickets to hear the noted primatologist speak at Macky Auditorium for the 50th George Gamow Memorial Lecture. The interest was so great that the event was moved to the Coors Events Center and 8,600 fans listened raptly to Goodall’s quiet, yet impassioned pleas to save the planet and its living creatures.

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Campus housing for students in recovery

CU-Boulder joined other universities across the country in a growing trend to provide a residential program dedicated to supporting students in recovery from substance abuse disorders and other addictions. The COmmunity for students in REcovery, or CORE, is the first of its kind in Colorado.

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Safe communities mean safe schools

The CU-Boulder Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence landed a healthy $6.2 million National Institute of Justice grant to evaluate the feasibility and impact of the Safe Communities Safe Schools model, which strives to reduce youth violence and increase pro-social behavior in select Colorado middle schools.

CU dancer on the national stage

Michelle Ellsworth, associate professor of dance, is creating a national buzz around her unconventional displays of dance. In 2015 she was included in The New York Times’ The Best Dance of 2015 roundup and was one of six dancers nationwide to win a Doris Duke Impact Award to support her “radical experimentation."

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Ralphie handler embodies courage, character

Max Demby became an unsuspecting hero when he interrupted a sexual assault while walking home from University Hill on a Friday night in April. When he heard a woman’s screams near the Engineering Center plaza, Demby yelled at the suspect who was assaulting her to stop. The suspect ran but was arrested a short time later by CU Police.

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Buffs ski team wins 20^th national championship

The CU-Boulder ski team won the program’s 20^th NCAA championship last March in Park City, marking the eighth national championship for Coach Richard Rokos, the most in CU-Boulder history. It also marked the Buffs third NCAA Championship this decade and third in the past five years.

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Into the heart of a storm

CU-Boulder led a $1.9 million project to develop cutting edge autonomous robotic systems for drones to better understand severe storms and other hazards that can be dangerous to manned aircraft. At the end of the three-year project, the drone technology will be tested in the nation’s notorious “Tornado Alley.”

As the bear falls

The image of a 2-year-old black bear falling out of a tree on campus after being tranquilized by Colorado Parks and Wildlife attracted international media attention and became one of the most popular posts of the year in CU-Boulder social media channels. The bear was unhurt and relocated.

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Student lands prestigious Goldwater Scholarship

Andrew Nelson, a junior engineering physics major, became one of 260 students selected from a pool of 1,206 mathematics, science and engineering students nationally who received the prestigious Goldwater. A Boulder native, Nelson is studying fusion as an energy source and plans to pursue a PhD in plasma physics.

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Plump characters influence kids’ eating

Children exposed to egg-shaped cartoon characters - like the Kool-Aid Man or the Mario video game character - eat twice as much unhealthy food such as cookies and candy as those who don’t see seemingly overweight cartoon characters. This novel study not surprisingly attracted lots of attention from media and parents alike.

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Undergraduates get on board with NASA research

Scientists and students from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) played a prominent role in NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale mission to better understand the physical processes of geomagnetic storms, solar flares and other energetic space phenomena. LASP is headquarters for the mission’s Science Operations Center, where 20 undergraduates work side-by-side with the pros.

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