Cold, snowy weather will persist in Boulder through the weekend and into early next week. By Danielle Meltz

The post Boulder weather to continue sending chills this weekend appeared first on CU Independent.

The shift from lecturing about medieval literature to teaching an online course in comic novels was drastic, but CU Professor William Kuskin felt it was worthwhile.

The professor, who has written on literature ranging from the Renaissance to graphic novels, never lost sight of comic books’ significance since it became his childhood hobby.

“I realized that comic books still had great stories, and from there I developed a college Maymester class and from there it’s kind of taken off,” Kuskin said.

Kuskin, who prefers comic books over other types of literature, said comic books allow you to connect to the power of books while allowing you to experience it in a visual way. He also said it is much quicker to analyze comic books than medieval novels.

“When I teach Geoffrey Chaucer, he’s so smart that he’s always ten steps ahead of you and he leaves bread crumbs for you,” Kuskin said of the father of English literature.

Kuskin mentioned that authors ask deep questions through their books, and with some authors such as Chaucer, it might take five weeks of explanation and history to get to those deep questions. With comic books it can take less than five minutes, he said, to get to the same level of depth.

He teaches one close reading on “Dumped,” Ultimate Spider-Man #78 by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley, which features Mary-Jane Watson going on a date. He also teaches “Master Race” by Bernard Krigstein, which illustrates Holocaust survival and revenge.

CU asked him to teach the courses online, and Kuskin was elated to explore something new in his career.

“The thing that I find exciting about it, and the thing that I find extremely risky, is that massive open online courses are truly democratic forms,” he said.

Kuskin remarked that the massive open online course is free through the online site Coursera, and that there’s nothing stopping students from signing up and taking a course or skipping class and coming back after a couple weeks.

Teaching online requires him to make a number of videos, Powerpoint lectures with voiceovers and a comic book that goes along with it. His day is comprised of recording lectures to get them to a good quality, editing them, grading and answering emails.

In lectures, students ask him questions and he can do the same, Kuskin said. ”But Coursera is a one way street, so my lecture needs to be written smoothly, they can’t rely on my bubbly personality as a professor.”

Even though he has enjoyed teaching the online course, the amount of time he puts into it and the new lectures he wants to teach make have him looking forward to returning to regular coursework at CU. He intends to teach existing courses such as Introduction to literature, a class on Chaucer and possibly a medieval class since he has taken a break from it for so long.

“I’m dying to teach intro to lit again because it puts me in contact with beginners, freshman, because they’re the heart and soul of the school I think because the questions they ask are so fresh,” he said.

He also has a new idea for a class, and wants to teach about motorcycle travel literature like “One Mans Caravan,” written in 1932 about a man who rides across the country on an old motorcycle.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Danielle Meltz at Danielle.meltz@colorado.edu.

While CU students head down the hill, Watson University social entrepreneurs hike to Chautauqua Park to attend the non-profit university in Boulder.

Watson University’s 18 students spend each semester honing in on their world-changing ideas within the unique social-venture incubator housed at the base of the Flatirons.

Mark Etem, originally from just north of San Francisco, came to Watson to examine how people relate to truth in society. (Gray Bender/CU Independent)

“In a traditional higher education setting, there’s a lot of ambiguity about how their teaching applies post-graduation,” said Michael Williams, an entrepreneurial coach at Watson. “A lot of students find themselves questioning what that has to do with their passions and what they want to do in the world. At Watson, we’re accountable for the personal development of the scholar and the application of what they learn rather than their grade. We’d rather see people who are alive and want to change the world. That’s our driving force.”

Watson students are enrolled in three business-like classes: Transformative action, sustainability and social entrepreneurship. Students also take a lab.

In the sustainability and social entrepreneurship class, for instance, students study global understanding of building the structure and framework of their venture, according to Madelle Mbong Kangha, a 23-year-old Watson scholar and London School of Economics graduate.

In the classes, Watson staff teach the students specific skills, like time management and business. Williams also runs a lab where students get to spend time together working on their ventures.

Williams’s goal as a coach is to help students either fail extremely fast or rapidly excel.

“The average entrepreneur fails seven times before they succeed,” Williams said. “Watson is a safe place to see people fail.”

Lab grades are based on extraordinary behavior, big successes as well as failures.

“If people have a spectacular failure, they are going to learn so much more from that than a lecture,” Williams said.

A failure might consist of realizing assumptions were wrong and scratching a whole project. Personal failures are also possible, if someone is too egotistic and hurts people during his or her time at Watson.

“Watson is a safe place to learn about your personal failures,” Williams said. “We want people who will make mistakes, because probably after these mistakes, people will come something amazing.”

Kangha came into Watson with Youth4Change, an organization she started that empowers and mentors young people. One of her main focuses is a disabilities project in Cameroon.

“At Watson, I am trying to find ways of having more impact and become more financially sustainable as an organization,” Kangha said. She formed a partnership with Omotola Okinsola, another student at Watson, to launch Jumpstart Academy Africa.

“Our mission is to provide youth opportunities to become ethical leaders and entrepreneurs,” Kangha said.

Classes at Watson are structured in such a way that they have an impact on the students and the way they go about developing their ventures.

“It’s very introspective,” Kangha said. “We look at business models and learn things that normal universities don’t teach. We learn about social entrepreneurs and change-makers. At other universities, we learn about problems and more problems, but here it is all about the solutions.”

A few of the students at Watson are current or past CU students. Junior marketing major Romain Vakilitabar, 21, said that because of his experiences with startup companies around the world, he feels his major at CU won’t apply to his future.

”I love Wastson because you totally have the freedom to create your own education,” Vakilitabar said. “I’ve been working really hard at CU to reinstate the program where you individually structure your own major.”

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Danielle Meltz at Danielle.meltz@colorado.edu, or @justmeltz.

Student-run activist group CU Divest led an unpermitted protest against the university’s fossil fuel investments at the UMC cafeteria seating area on Wednesday.

Separating into three groups in each of the UMC cafeterias, students jumped onto reserved tables with megaphones and hand drums and delivered a scripted speech urging CU to cut its fossil fuel shares. They then exited the UMC to form a line traveling around the building. UMC security and CUPD expressed concern to the students but did not issue any written warnings or citations.

Students march around the UMC fountain Wednesday to bring attention to the use of fossil fuels on campus. (Gray Bender/CU Independent)

Environmental studies senior Elena Parthemer said that the inspiration behind the protest was the work and actions of Bill McKibben, an author and environmental activist who founded the “Do The Math” tour, a school-to-school national campaign that informs people about the harms of carbon emissions and urges schools to “divest” from fossil fuels.

“The momentum got going with that,” Parthemer said. “CU Divest collected over 2,000 signatures as we reached out to faculty, students, alumni. In last spring’s student election, 66 percent voted for divestment out of the fossil fuel industry.”

Parthemer added that CU Student Government supported the divestment, but the CU Foundation, which is in charge of CU’s endowment, has not met their demands. CU President Bruce Benson stated in March that the school will not be taking steps toward divesting in fossil fuels.

“They weren’t listening to what we wanted, and that’s when we got fired up,” Parthemer said. “We decided it was time for the next step, and we wanted to spread more awareness on campus to louden message to administration.”

PhD chemistry student Skye Rios’ goal for the protest was to shift the administration’s mindset around fossil fuels and to create a space for dialogue and critical thinking.

“I think that protests like this are more effective than simply feeling empathetic and refusing to act,” Rios said. “We will continue to make noise until the administration hears us and responds appropriately.”

Economics senior Quinn Leccese, 21, believes the urgency of the situation warrants CU Divest’s actions.

“We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of Sandy,” Leccese said. “We don’t have any time to waste in terms of trying to weaken the fossil fuel industry and the degree of destruction.”

CU Ph.D. student Simon Mostama and Watson University scholar Katie Raitz bring the protest to the UMC with drums and calls for student to stand up against fossile fuels. (Gray Bender/CU Independent)

The protest caught the attention of sophomore geography and film major Sydney Murphy, 19, who supports CU Divest’s actions.

“I loved that they brought awareness to a completely relevant topic involving the students here,” Murphy said. “We’re pretty much paying for global warming, and that’s disgusting. The fact that the president of CU, who is supposed to be Mr. Eco-friendly, is ignoring it is wild.”

CU Divest invites students to meet at UMC 327 2 p.m. Friday to plan further action. 

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Danielle Meltz at Danielle.meltz@colorado.edu, twitter/justmeltz.

Staff Writer Kelly Ragan and Breaking News Editor Ali Tadayon contributed to this story.

Students gathered around the UMC fountain on Monday in protest of the recognition of Columbus Day.

The protesters lay down in completely black clothing as a representation of the deaths caused by Christopher Columbus, according to CU graduate student Jason Romero, 21, the creator of today’s protest.

They also handed out fliers and buttons and talked to students.

Romero added that the purpose of the protest is to end the federal recognition of Columbus Day, and to acknowledge the people who populated America before Columbus arrived.

“Right now we’re trying to make people aware and spread the word, because a lot of people hear about Columbus Day, but he isn’t this great discoverer,” Romero said. “He started a genocide in this great nation. We’re told that he discovered this country, but there were indigenous people here before that.”

“The nation was built on accepting people but here’s someone who killed people and raped women,” senior business major and protester Luis Morales, 22, said.

“There are usually protests that go on throughout the state, and we’ve heard about it happen in years past at CU, but this is the first time we’ve decided to bring it back to CU,” said junior history major Cibonet Salazar, 21.

The protesters are made up of a collection of multicultural and politically active student groups on campus. The groups in particular prefer to remain anonymous.

“Columbus Day directly affected multicultural people more,” Salazar said.

The protesters have no formal group or name, and do not have any direct affiliation with the school.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Danielle Meltz at Danielle.Meltz@colorado.edu, twitter/justmeltz.

A handful of students were among about 100 people evacuated by helicopter from a community in Lefthand Canyon during the mid-September flash floods.

Graduate student Kelsey Lanning, 22, was one of the people who had to be airlifted out of the Nugget Hill neighborhood after flood waters destroyed roads on Sept. 12.

“It’s a weird feeling to know that there is no way out other than helicopter or a 15-mile hike,” Lanning said. “I felt trapped. We had to boil water we caught off the roof from the rain. For cooking, we didn’t have electricity so we had a wood-burning stove that we were able to kind of cook beans on and then we had a propane grill that we were able to boil some water on.”

Lanning said that they were able to get by with people inviting them over for meals, but they would have run out of food if they stayed there any longer.

“There was one guy who actually hiked back to Boulder and then back to Lefthand Canyon and brought gasoline and supplies for people,” she said.

Senior psychology major Sam Lange, 21, said being stranded in Nugget Hill united the residents.

“It was cool to see the community come together,” Lange said. “There are a lot of older people in the area, and whenever people needed food or water, everyone would chip in, and people were taking gas out of their cars to give to their neighbors for their gas generators.”

On Sept. 13, helicopters began to circle the area and were able to evacuate people for medical emergencies.

“There was a little girl who was having a really bad asthma attack, and she could not breathe,” Lange said. “She started turning purple, and the National Guard repelled down out of the helicopter and gave her medicine.”

The girl’s mother was also airlifted by a helicopter later that day.

Senior environmental design major Ben Seaman, 22, said he performed the head count of people who needed to be evacuated from the area.

Seaman and Lanning were taken with the rest of the people who chose to be evacuated on Sept.14 by Chinook helicopters.

“They brought us back to the Boulder (Municipal) Airport and dropped us off, and they had a bunch of fireman lined up as we got out,” Lanning said. “It felt like we were in one of those movies. They brought you into this area where you had to check in for being evacuated, and they had food and water, and then they had shuttle buses to bring you to a shelter in Niwot.” 

The National Guard continues to drop down food and water because many residents decided to stay in Nugget Hill.

“About 50 to 75 percent of the people were like ‘I’m not going anywhere. I have lived here for 30 years. This is my home; I don’t want to leave,” Lanning said.

Correction: This story has been updated from its original version to correct an erroneously identified evacuee. The girl who experienced an asthma attack and her mother were both evacuated by helicopter on Sept. 13.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Danielle Meltz at Danielle.meltz@colorado.edu, twitter/justmeltz.

CU students received notifications Wednesday night extending the Flash Flood Warning put into effect by the National Weather Service at around 8 p.m., and a CU alert informed people to “move to upper levels or higher levels on foot.”

The National Weather Service reported that a “Flash flood watch is in effect until September 13th, 6:00am MDT,” and three people in Colorado have been confirmed dead in the flooding.

Knollwood Tennis Courts just west of the Pearl St. Mall completely submerged after intense flooding Thursday afternoon. (Nate Bruzdzinski/CU Independent)

According to a news release from CU, campus will be closed Thursday and Friday due to damage from the flooding and ongoing threats.

“40 of our buildings have some form of water damage, that is about 25 percent of the buildings on campus,” said Ryan Huff, CUPD spokesperson. Officials have not decided when the campus will reopen.

Huff added that 21 students have been relocated: 11 will have to permanently move dorms due to damages and 10 will be relocated for a week.

“Most of our buildings on campus right now that have basements have seen some kind of low-level flooding with water seeping in through cracks in the foundation,” CU spokesperson Bronson Hilliard said.

Responding to rumors of the roof of the Koebel business building collapsing, Hillard said, “No, Leed’s roof did not collapse. That was a rumor on social media, it was not true.”

Topher Pollard, a former resident visiting Reed Hall, helped clean up the flood damage in the dorm’s subbasement.

“We did bucket crews for three and a half hours, where we just took every trash can in the building, formed a fire line and just pumped it,” Pollard said. “They currently have vacuums in there now.”

Bernadette Venters Sefic, a sophomore economics major and a Resident Advisor at Sewall, witnessed the reported gas leak in her dorm at 12:30 a.m.

”The fire alarm, along with the sirens and the lights, went off and everyone evacuated to the parking lot,” Venters Sefic said. “We had to wait out there for a half hour in the rain before we were allowed back into the building.”

“Our dorm never flooded, however we did get evacuated,” said Sydney Taylor, a 19-year-old flock leader from Smith Hall. “We had issues with the boiler room that caused steam that looked like smoke.”

Graduate students in faculty housing located on Boulder Creek have been evacuated to higher floors in the building.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Danielle Meltz at Danielle.Meltz@colorado.edu.

Staff Writer Ed King contributed to this report.

University Memorial Center’s Subway and Alferd Packer Grill & Restaurant are getting a new neighbor in mid-October, when Panda Express moves into the space previously occupied by Wok & Roll Teriyaki.

UMC officials accepted Panda Express’s bid this summer to take the place of the sushi restaurant.

Panda Express will be replacing Wok & Roll next to Subway in the University Memorial Center food court. (Nate Bruzdzinski/CU Independent)

Andrea Zelinko, assistant director for administration at the UMC, said a student board questioned staff on campus and students in their classes about preferable food options for the student center. Interviews, Zelinko said, trended toward the conclusion that CU wanted restaurants that sell crepes, ice cream, Asian or Mediterranean cuisine.

“I’m excited! I like Panda Express a lot,” Vanessa Schreckengast, a 25-year-old graduate student, said.

The survey included menu choices that meet dietary needs, contributions to scholarships and the restaurants’ ability to meet recycling requirements, according to Zelinko.

Any food vendor that met the criteria and fell into one of the four categories was allowed to put in a bid to serve on campus.

Some students are looking forward to the restaurant’s arrival on campus next month.

”I think it’ll be a lot better than the old one because a lot more people know what Panda is,” Meagan Johnson, a 21-year-old English major, said.

Johnson worried she’s not getting the biggest bang for her buck from UMC vendors.

“I think they put restrictions on the portion of the food, and you still have to pay a lot for it,” she said.

Other students share Johnson’s financial concerns.

“To be honest, I really like Panda, so I’m glad it’s opening, but I’m a broke college student so I don’t know how much I’ll buy it,” Kelly Foster, a 20-year-old economics and integrative physiology major, said.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Danielle Meltz at Danielle.Meltz@colorado.edu, twitter/justmeltz.

The bustle of people in different clothing, the buzz of accents and languages, and the exotic combination of aroma from different food made CU’s International Festival come alive.

The International Festival on April 13 is the biggest student run event at CU. It involved different ethnic student groups who made food and brought ornaments and accessories from their home countries. It was by far one of the most welcoming experiences I’ve had at CU. It was a place where everyone wanted to know more than just your name; they wanted to know where you came from and your story. As I talked to people from different countries, prejudices seemed to subside. Everyone was just there to have a good time, eat really interesting food and learn about other cultures. The International Festival was the epitome of how people should be treated. However, at CU I think the experience of people seeing past where you are from is less common than some might think.

As an international student, I’ve often come across people who make assumptions about where I’m from, and openly say it to my face without thinking that they are doing anything wrong. I feel like they immediately put me into a box often linked to where I am from, instead of solely my personality. Even in my own dorm I get referred to as, “Dubai Danielle.” It’s a label, but that’s all that it is.

I think that a big issue when it comes to different diversities interacting with each other is that people don’t realize the effect of what they are saying. To people in my dorm, Dubai Danielle might be a way of distinguishing me from all the other Danielle’s that they know, but I see it as a much larger issue. One that deals with setting up these walls and labels, and it makes it harder for us to look at each other as equals, instead of someone from the outside group.

The idea of whether our university is diverse enough is completely relative, and I understand when people say that they think CU is diverse. However, from an internationals standpoint, it can be intimidating to speak to people outside of your own race when you feel like such a minority.

A lot of people don’t realize that these prejudices exist because they might not be as familiar with them. Sidney Gomez, who is part of the multi-ethnic media organization (MEMO), talked about the way ethnic groups on campus help people feel safe.

“As a minority group, feeling safe is not having any of those things affect your relationships,”Gomez said. “It’s not feeling targeted.”

The International Festival at CU was a great chance to really see what other cultures are at CU and gave me the chance to really hear other people’s opinions on this topic.

While I think the International Festival was a great way for the minority groups to get to know each other, I don’t think that the rest of the CU student body was very much involved. For those who wanted to hear about the festival, it would have been easy to find, but for someone who is not in a minority group, I don’t think that the festival was advertised as much as some of the other events on campus. As far as I could see from walking around, most of the people were either the students running it or parents with their kids.

It was a successful event. I just hope that in the following years, we start to see more involvement from the broader student population because the lack of connections between diversities is an issue. Even if people don’t realize it now, I think that learning how to interact with other nationalities is going to be a big part of our lives once we leave college. We have so much to learn from other cultures, and I think that it’s important to learn that not every culture is the same. No one wants to make a cultural faux pas similar to when George Bush thought he made the peace sign in Australia and instead insulted thousands of people. Granted, our mistakes might not be as large, but I think that preparing to deal with other nationalities is something that should be more expected throughout our university experience.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Danielle Meltz at Danielle.meltz@colorado.edu.

I vividly remember my orientation where the phrase “Get Involved!” was yelled at me repeatedly for two days straight. They even showed a video on ‘senior regrets’ which discussed how students wished they had gotten more involved on campus. It was quite the overwhelming experience for a student who came from a high school that did not have a football team, let alone student interest groups. I made it my mission to find how students, including myself, could get the most of their CU experience, while also bettering them post-graduation.

(CU Independent Illustration/Josh Shettler)

After doing my research, I can see why I was encouraged to become aware of university activities. You can join a club related to your major, or if that doesn’t interest you, one about scuba diving or sky-diving might do the trick. There are also a lot of opportunities available on campus related to volunteer work and part-time jobs that I was not aware of as well.

One of the most surprising things I found when talking to advisers was that if you are in the engineering department or a social science major and are interested in the research that one of your professors is doing, oftentimes they will let you volunteer with them just by asking. Christopher Anderson, engineering department adviser, discussed the way joining a research lab or doing a summer internship is “a good foot in the door” for graduation.

The theater department has an extensive list of places where students can do internships according to Kyle Neidt, theater department adviser. The Colorado Shakespeare Festival and the Curious Theatre Company are a couple of examples. Neidt said that a theater major requires an internship for their BA. She also spoke highly of CU’s Fringe Festival where theater students take over the entire University Theatre building for a weekend in April and put on their own performances without the inclusion of any of the professors. An activity like this could look impressive on a resume.

Ken Bonetti, economics department adviser, talked about the way an internship or part time job, along with a good GPA, will benefit students who want to “get into the job market right after they graduate,” because of the practical experience you receive and the references with whom you can make connections.

My concern is that I learned more about the opportunities at CU from the week I spent talking to advisers and researching departments than I had my entire freshman year. And while the information is out there if you go looking for it, I feel like a lot of the freshman class doesn’t even know that it exists.

Everyone I know who has applied or been accepted to a summer internship program, including myself, began their search without looking at what CU has to offer first. This is a shame considering that CU has information on internships from all over the country, including a few internationally, and you can be sure that these would be quality internships instead of random ones consisting of doing busy paper work and fetching coffee. Instead of just being told to “get involved,” I think that students should be given a bit more of direction their freshman year so that they can fully take advantage of what CU has to offer.

I think that developing a way to keep the students more informed about their opportunities is vital in producing students that will stand out once they graduate. Christopher Anderson, undergraduate adviser in the mechanical engineering department, talked about the way he sends out emails or posts flyers within the engineering building if an internship or research opportunity comes up.

As a psychology major, I went around reading the flyers in Muenzinger, and although every board had a flyer on joining the Psi Chi club or a random volunteer experiment, I couldn’t find anything related to opportunities that dealt with studies or internships within the psychology department. That being said, the psychology department website contains a ton of information on the research going on here at CU that I feel like a lot of students are not aware of.

I am not saying that students should be told about every opportunity available. College is the first step to being independent for most, and I think that it is important for students to learn how to go out and find the information they need for themselves. However, I do think that as a freshman it is very easy to get distracted and lose track of what is important, and this can be very risky when your future is at stake. I feel like a lot of people turn to internships right before they graduate, but there are so many opportunities that can benefit students right from their freshman year. I think that an hour info session before college starts in the fall, or an adviser handing out a pamphlet on how to get involved with your major would be beneficial to those who are looking for opportunities and would also prevent the rush to find opportunities right before graduation.

Internships are a vital part of getting a job once you graduate regardless of what field you choose to pursue. They can help students realize whether or not they really want to pursue a career in the major they are working on. I don’t want it to be five years after I graduate, looking back on college and wishing I had been an international affairs major instead of environmental studies major. As Bonetti said, you want to think that your major is “the best thing since sliced bread.”

Contact Staff Writer Danielle Meltz at Danielle.meltz@colorado.edu