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The first nine years of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah will be discussed with monument manager Dave Hunsaker in a public event at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Sept. 28. Hunsaker will speak at 7 p.m. in Eaton Humanities Building room 1B50 followed by a conversation with CU-Boulder history and environmental studies Professor Patricia Nelson Limerick and Distinguished Professor Charles Wilkinson of the law school. The free event is sponsored by the CU-Boulder Center of the American West.

Partly by design, both overall enrollment and the size of the freshman class are down slightly this year at the University of Colorado at Boulder but despite the overall downsizing, ethnic minority undergraduate enrollment is up, according to census figures released today. Following a record freshman class of almost 5,600 in 2003, a reduction in freshman enrollment to 5,000 was planned over two years to moderate the impact of rapid growth over the last 10 years, especially in the number of undergraduates.

Note to Editors: The Hurricane Katrina image can be downloaded at http://ccar.colorado.edu/~leben/katrina_path.pdf . An image produced by a University of Colorado at Boulder team shows the wind speeds of Hurricane Katrina increasing dramatically as it passes through the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico's Loop Current toward the Gulf Coast in late August.

The economic effects of Hurricane Katrina could linger for local charities and the tourism industry in Colorado, according to University of Colorado at Boulder economist Richard Wobbekind. "I think the hurricane has the potential to impact the nonprofit communities in Colorado," said Wobbekind, director of the Business Research Division in the Leeds School of Business. "We saw a dramatic drop-off in local giving after Sept. 11 and to a lesser degree after the tsunami.

Former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt will visit the University of Colorado at Boulder Sept. 23 to speak about his new book, "Cities in the Wilderness: A New Vision of Land Use in America." Babbitt's presentation starts at 3 p.m. in the Old Main Chapel on the CU-Boulder campus. The event is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a book signing and sale. Babbitt's appearance is sponsored by CU-Boulder's Center of the American West, Natural Resources Law Center and Center for Environmental Journalism.

Landscape paintings depicting high mountains and polar regions by internationally known University of Colorado at Boulder glaciologist Mark Meier will be on display at the Boulder Public Library and at his home studio from Sept. 30 to Oct. 9. Meier, the former director of CU-Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research who has conducted research from Greenland to the South Pole, will display his paintings at the library and at his home as part of the Boulder Open Studios project. His paintings have been displayed, commissioned and sold in the United States and Europe.

"Highlights of the CU Art Museum's Permanent Collection," a free public exhibit presented by the University of Colorado at Boulder Friends of the Libraries, will take place Sept. 30 at the University of Colorado at Boulder Art Museum. Exhibit curator and director of the CU Art Museum Lisa Tamaris Becker will discuss some of the works on display at the 7 p.m. event. The exhibit includes Pre-Columbian ceramics, Goya, Rembrandt, Picasso, Rauschenberg, Warhol and many others. A catered reception will follow the presentation.

International student numbers at the University of Colorado at Boulder will drop 6 percent this year, following a trend throughout the United States that has intensified as national security measures tighten and the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia move to attract students discouraged by U.S. policies. International student enrollment peaked on the Boulder campus in 2002 at 1,165 and has been soft or declining since then, following a downward trend in international student numbers nationwide, said Larry Bell, director of the CU-Boulder Office of International Education.

As part of their "low- to no-petroleum" pledge for the 2005 Solar Decathlon competition, University of Colorado students are getting ready to transport their solar home to Washington, D.C., this month using 100 percent biodiesel fuel made from vegetable oil. The 800-square-foot solar home, which is now in the final week of construction, is scheduled to begin its cross-country journey Sept. 21 and will arrive in the nation's capital Sept. 29.

The extraordinary politics, science and secrecy of the former Rocky Flats nuclear bomb factory are now part of an Internet multimedia "virtual museum exhibit" developed by University of Colorado at Boulder Associate Professor Len Ackland and a team of researchers. The "Rocky Flats Virtual Exhibit" is an experimental project that uses audio, video, photographs and text to describe a potentially catastrophic 1969 fire at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant eight miles south of Boulder. The exhibit is sponsored by the Center for Environmental Journalism at CU-Boulder.