Campus News Briefs Summer 2021

Rethinking Performance Art Culture

Inspired by the #MeToo movement, CU faculty members Amanda Rose Villarreal (PhDThtr’21) and Tamara Meneghini created the Colorado Theatre Standards, a set of guidelines to foster safety and respect for future generations of performance artists. Villarreal and Meneghini hope the detailed instructions for dealing with conflicts, handling violence and stage intimacy, reporting sexual harassment and more will inspire social justice change in the industry. Said Villarreal to CU Boulder Today: “When people know better, people can do better.”

CU Leads NASA Space Tech Research Institute

Over the next five years, researchers at CU Boulder will lead the Advanced Computational Center for Entry System Simulation (ACCESS) institute with NASA. The multi-partner work, led by professor Iain Boyd of the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, will focus on thermal protection systems, which protect spacecraft from the aerodynamic heating they experience when entering the atmosphere. 

Spotlight on African American Studies

In May, CU Boulder announced the Center for African and African American Studies. Known as CAAAS (or “the Cause”), the center will support teaching, research and creative work on the history and culture of people of African descent. The center has been a goal for professor and center director Reiland Rabaka for over 15 years: “The establishment of CAAAS means Black students and faculty will be able to feel a greater sense of belonging at CU Boulder,” Rabaka told CU Boulder Today. 

Heard Around Campus

The best leaders...can empathize with those they stand for. They can understand the pain, the rage, the fear, the complexity.”

— Stacey Abrams, voting rights activist and bestselling author, in her address to graduates at the 2021 Colorado Law commencement ceremony.

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