Through the Native American Sustainable Housing Initiative (NASHI), an interdisciplinary collaboration of faculty and students is seeking to improve housing conditions on tribal lands through research, education and outreach activities. This initiative establishes an ongoing academic service-learning program between the CU environmental design program and the construction technology program at Oglala Lakota College in Rapid City, South Dakota.

The CU Heritage Center exhibit focuses on addressing the need for healthy, sustainable and affordable housing for the Oglala Sioux Tribe. This includes the program’s studies and plans for straw bale construction using sustainable and durable materials for energy efficient homes capturing solar, wind and geothermal energy.

The exhibit will be updated later this year to include the program’s progress during the 2012 summer season. Visit the CU Heritage Center and track the NASHI’s design and construction of sustainable, affordable, culturally inclusive and regionally appropriate housing on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

CU Heritage Center
Third floor of Old Main
Hours: Monday-Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
303-492-6329

For more information about the
Native American Sustainable Housing Initiative contact
Rob Pyatt, instructor and research associate at
rob.pyatt@colorado.edu
or303-803-6810.

How many people were in the first graduating class?

When was the Alumni Association formed?

When did the first woman graduate from the University of Colorado Boulder?

Who were the Canebearers?

Each year, the grand marshal begins the commencement ceremony. What are the marshal’s duties?

Which CU president is honored at every commencement with excerpts from one of his graduation speeches?

Why is an official graduation ceremony called “commencement?”

Which class was the first to wear caps and gowns at CU commencement exercises?

What special piece of jewelry does the CU president wear at commencement?

When was the official academic regalia dress code established in the United States?

What is CU’s alma mater?

Check your answers here!

Join the always entertaining and enlightening Alan Nelson, CU senior grounds specialist, on the Tree Walk to learn about the campus arboretum. As senior ground specialist, Nelson has been conducting this popular tour for more than 20 years. Some of the trees, including the majestic 100-year-old cottonwood outside Old Main, are native to this region, while others were imported from the east coast, the southern U.S., Europe and Asia, and are rarely seen in Colorado except on CU grounds.

The tour departs from the west steps of Norlin Library on Wednesday, May 2 at 5 p.m. and will be followed by a reception at the CU Heritage Center and a presentation on notable trees by Kathleen Alexander, city of Boulder forester.

This event is free to the public.

Come rain or shine!

This FREE event is co-sponsored by the CU Heritage Center, the city of Boulder and CU Facilities Management.

Director Williams held a public talk earlier that day to announce CU-Boulder’s No. 1 ranking for Peace Corps participation. CU-Boulder currently has 112 alumni, ranging in age from 21 to 77, volunteering for Peace Corps service. Each has pledged two years of service abroad under challenging conditions for the social and economic development of global communities. CU’s No. 1 Peace Corps ranking for two years in a row is tangible evidence of something we have always known: our Forever Buffs are service-oriented and down-to-earth, working tirelessly to benefit communities and people around the globe.

Read more about it here!

Cast in 1877 by Van Deuzen & Lift of Cincinnati, this bell was first hung in the belfry of Old Main in 1878. It signalled class changes until 1926, when a large crack appeared during the celebratory ringing that followed a football victory over the Colorado School of Mines.

Under pressure from alumni groups not to discard the cracked bell, President George Norlin promised to preserve it in the University Musuem. Instead, the bell wound up in the lobby of the Men’s Gymnasium, where it remained until about 2:30 on the morning of October 12, 1948.

Then, while the night watchman was on his lunch break, pranksters spirited the 1,000-pound bell out of the building, loaded it onto a truck, and vanished into the night.

In October 1950, the bell, caked with mud and sporting a large M on its side, appeared on the School of Mines campus in Golden, near which it had evidently been buried for two years. Despite some fuss and bluster from CU administrators, the Orediggers responsible were never apprehended.

The theft was only the last of numerous pranks perpetrated on this bell, which has lost its tongue repeatedly — the last time in 1926, as the result of a freshman conspiracy, whose members did not return the clapper until 1929. The tradition of bell tampering dates back to the 1880s, when members of the class of 1886 one night filed almost all the way through the clapper in the hope that it would drop out when the bell was rung the next morning. Nothing happened for a month. Then, according to Glory, Colorado, a history of CU, “without warning, one day it came hurtling down, narrowly missing the head of the janitor, and crashed through three floors to the basement. The janitor was deaf and continued to pull the rope long after the clapper had disappeared.”

 Now, the bell is located in the red gallery of the CU Heritage Center.