Annual Report - Center of the American West

Outreach
The Center of the American West is situated on the campus of the University of
Colorado Boulder. Given our activity in a variety of arenas, from energy to land
use, to Native American identity—and given our extensive rolodex—it would
be easy to forget that the Center is first and foremost a collegiate educational
unit. Fortunately, for the Center and for our future, we understand both the
responsibility and the opportunity this position offers us. Our students are
the Center’s ambassadors—our agents of good will and embodiments of the
Center’s work in the world. Whenever we bring speakers to campus, the Center
makes it a point to schedule times so these speakers can meet with students.
We not only want to show off the talent pool at our disposal, but we also enjoy
watching our speakers field the tough questions these powerful young minds
“Visions of the American Environment,”
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American
History Summer Seminar for Teachers, University of Colorado
Boulder, CO – July 18-24, 2010
2010 marked Patty’s seventh year with Gilder Lehrman’s summer program,
a week-long intensive seminar for history teachers nationwide. “Visions of
the American Environment” asked participants to pursue a very intense and
instructive review of the main patterns and trends of U.S. environmental
history through a series of focused case studies. The goals of the program are
to educate teachers, and to enable them to create curricula to bring back into
their own classrooms.
Turning Hindsight Into Foresight
conjure up. Of course, they ask these questions with the charm and disarming
humor that are the trademarks of the Center, making them that much more
of a formidable audience. This year has been a banner year for our students.
They have accompanied the Center on presentations to the Bureau of Land
Management Leadership, they have served as note takers and fact checkers,
they have become board members of our very own Board of Directors, and
they have taken the initiative to begin their own projects. They are not only
our ambassadors; they are our future. While it’s tempting to brand 2010-2011
as the year of the student, in point of fact, every year here at the Center of the
American West has been and will be the year of the student.
National Landscape Conservation
System Summit
Las Vegas, NV – November 14-17, 2010
The Bureau of Land Management’s National Landscape Conservation System
(NLCS)—an extraordinary, but under-recognized, collection of treasured
public lands — hosted this two-day event focused on NLCS and envisioning
its future. Patty brought five CU undergraduates to the summit and they all
played significant roles in leading discussions at breakout sessions, conveying
their impressions of the agency’s opportunities and difficulties, and offering
their recommendations for the next 10 years of the NLCS. A unique aspect
of the summit was the use of a pre-enactor (extending the concept of the