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The University of Colorado at Boulder will host a public panel discussion on Monday, Oct. 16, about Amendment 39 and Referendum J, two November ballot initiatives that could change how Colorado funds public schools. Co-sponsored by the Education and Public Interest Center in CU-Boulder's School of Education and the Colorado Children's Campaign, the panel discussion will be held from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Old Main Chapel on the Boulder campus.

Former NASA astronaut and University of Colorado at Boulder alumnus Scott Carpenter, the second American to orbit Earth, will be on campus Oct. 12 to present a $10,000 astronaut scholarship to a CU-Boulder physics department senior.

Engineering students at the University of Colorado at Boulder are finding more meaningful-and often better paying-part-time jobs in their pursuits of education, thanks to a program that also helps the college stretch its limited budget.

Faculty and students who have spent the last six weeks learning to use the high-tech equipment in CU-Boulder's new ATLAS building will spend a day demonstrating the building's potential this Friday, Oct. 13, including demonstrations in the cutting-edge "black box" multimedia performance space, panel discussions on technology-related topics and more.

Setting foot in a classroom as a new teacher can be overwhelming enough to ground many fledgling teachers before they even take off. But the University of Colorado at Boulder's School of Education is striving to make the process less daunting by pairing newly licensed teachers with experienced teachers from local school districts. And at the same time, the new teachers get a head start on their master's degrees.

The University of Colorado at Boulder received $256.5 million in sponsored research awards for the 2006 fiscal year, nearly two-thirds of it from four of the largest federal agencies.

A region of the human brain that scientists believe is critical to human intellectual abilities surprisingly functions much like a digital computer, according to psychology Professor Randall O'Reilly of the University of Colorado at Boulder. The finding could help researchers better understand the functioning of human intelligence. In a review of biological computer models of the brain appearing in the Oct. 6 edition of the journal Science, O'Reilly contends that the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia operate much like a digital computer system.

Gilbert F. White, known worldwide as the "father of floodplain management" and one of the most distinguished and internationally recognized faculty members at the University of Colorado at Boulder, died on Oct. 5 at his home in Boulder. He was 94.

University of Colorado at Boulder officials are hoping measures taken to help improve fan behavior at CU football games over the past several years will continue to pay dividends when Baylor visits Folsom Field for the homecoming game Oct. 7.

The University of Colorado at Boulder in early 2007 will open a $180,000 exhibit featuring a floating sphere that can display animated images of Earth's atmosphere, oceans and continents, as well as other planets. Known as "Science on a Sphere," the exhibit will be located in CU-Boulder's Fiske Planetarium and will be open to the public, according to Douglas Duncan, director of the planetarium and the Sommers-Bausch Observatory.