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English alumnus Dick Shahan recently made a $75,000 gift commitment to CU-Boulder — $50,000 of which established an endowment to create the Dick Shahan CU-Boulder Undergraduate Writing Competition, expected to generate an annual prize of $2,000 for a prose piece that features Boulder. The additional $25,000 will fund the Shahan Graduate Fellowships in the CU-Boulder English Department, providing an annual $1,000 research grant for an English graduate student.

Children who spend more time in less structured activities—from playing outside to reading books to visiting the zoo—are better able to set their own goals and take actions to meet those goals without prodding from adults, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder.

Interested in exploring the basic concepts of our legal system? Have you always wondered what it would be like to go to law school? University of Colorado faculty, staff and friends are invited to enjoy priority registration for Mini Law School 2014. Registration opens to the public on June 30 and the class is expected to fill up quickly. Learn more >>

A new educational partnership at the University of Colorado Boulder will provide expanded degree options for working professionals interested in specialized graduate education focused on energy and water. Beginning this fall, qualified students can earn both a Master of Engineering (ME) degree and a Professional Certificate in Renewable and Sustainable Energy or a Professional Certificate in Water Engineering and Management. The degree and certificates can be earned either via distance education or in campus classes and may be pursued either part- or full-time.

A new study on obesity and people’s happiness by CU-Boulder sociology researchers suggests that it’s not obesity by itself that determines whether a person is happy with their body image but where you live. According to study co-author Philip Pendergast, a doctoral student in sociology at CU-Boulder, if a person who is obese lives in a community where people share the same body type they are more likely to be happier.

If the state of the world is flat, hot and crowded, the field of public health is large, diffuse and complex. That’s why the University of Colorado Boulder is giving students the ability to earn an interdisciplinary certificate in public health.

Working aside, people may have already planned what they want to do for this summer. If you still don’t have major plans and don’t have much money, click through for 20 ideas that won't bust your budget.

In a discovery decades in the making, scientists have detected the first of a “theoretical” class of stars first proposed in 1975 by physicist Kip Thorne and astronomer Anna Żytkow.

Bradley J. Birzer has been appointed the second Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy, the University of Colorado Boulder announced today. Birzer, a professor of history and the Russell Amos Kirk Chair in American Studies at Hillsdale College in Michigan, will begin his one-year appointment beginning in fall 2014. “Dr. Birzer brings impressive breadth to CU, primarily in the discipline of history as well as areas of literary significance,” said Steven R. Leigh, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at CU-Boulder.

The amount of “hedging” language—words that suggest room for doubt—used by prominent newspapers in articles about climate change has increased over time, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder. The study, published in the journal Environmental Communication , also found that newspapers in the U.S. use more hedging language in climate stories than their counterparts in Spain.