Academics

Dozens of activities await new students at the University of Colorado Boulder starting Aug. 23, including a welcome convocation and a “Global Jam” international food and music fest. The free events give new students a chance to get acquainted with each other, the campus and surrounding community before classes start on Aug. 27. The activities are scheduled in addition to orientation sessions that cover the details of class registration, policies and student services at each college.

Volunteers from a variety of campus groups will be available to help new students move their belongings into residence halls at the University of Colorado Boulder Aug. 21 and Aug. 23 as New Student Move-In begins next week. New students will move in Aug. 21 through Aug. 23 with the majority of freshmen moving in on Aug. 23, according to Kambiz Khalili, executive director for Housing and Dining Services. The volunteer movers will be stationed near all campus residence halls to help students and their parents move belongings into the halls as quickly as possible.

CU Opera provided student vocalists for the lead roles in the Colorado Music Festival’s presentation of Hans Krasa’s “Brundibar," June 28-29.

Michael Radelet , professor of sociology, is an expert on the use of the death penalty in Colorado and the United States. He has documented all of Colorado’s executions and notes that Colorado abolished the penalty between 1897 and 1901, came within one vote of abolishing it again in 2009 and has executed only one person since 1967. “We've always debated the death penalty in Colorado, and the general thrust of our history is in the direction of abolition,” he said.

Kenneth Foote , professor of geography, studies how events of violence and tragedy are memorialized and remembered. He has visited hundreds of sites that have been scarred by incidents of violence or tragedy in the United States and abroad, and is the author of the book “Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy.” He can be reached at kfoote@colorado.edu or 303-641-3346.

When a young caller for the University of Colorado Boulder’s annual giving program asked Roe Green a decade ago if she would consider increasing her $100 annual gift to $150, he was the first to get the hint that Green might become a key part of the theater program from which she’d graduated in 1970. “I told the caller, ‘Oh, I think I’d like to give more,’ ” recalled Green.

University of Colorado Boulder researchers will be watching closely when South African bilateral leg amputee and sprinter Oscar Pistorius, dubbed “The Blade Runner,” makes his way to the starting block for the 400-meter sprint in the 2012 London Olympics.

An international team including University of Colorado Boulder researchers has found the first direct evidence for a new particle that likely is the long sought-after Higgs boson, believed to endow the universe with mass.

A new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder indicates air pollution in the form of nitrogen compounds emanating from power plants, automobiles and agriculture is changing the alpine vegetation in Rocky Mountain National Park.