PIFP Celebrates 10th Anniversary

Last night, I enjoyed attending a dinner to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Public Interest Fellowship Program (PIFP). The PIFP places CC students in summer and yearlong fellowships in Colorado nonprofits. This year 38 students (see the group in the photo below) will get paid internships (18 summer and 18 yearlong) in organizations like the ACLU, Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado and TESSA. These fellowships are very competitive and the nonprofits involved report to be incredibly impressed with their CC fellows.

This year’s program was also special because the Livesay Award was given for the first time. Jeff Livesay, Professor of Sociology, founded CC’s PIFP and this award was established in his honor. The first recipient of the award was John Fish, founder of Princeton AlumniCorps and Program Leader of the Project 55 Fellowship Program (a program much like our PIFP) for 20 years. John (in the photo below) also taught CC students for many years as part of the ACM’s Urban Studies program in Chicago.

Alumni Adventure – The Big Field Trip

Angela Smith Kirkman ’95 and Jason Kirkman ’95 recently returned to the US after traveling for two years around the globe and homeschooling their three children. They  just unveiled a new web site (www.TheBigFieldTrip.com) of their travelogues and recipes from around the world. I hear that a number of CC alumni have been following their posts and thought that I would share it with my blog readers so that others in the CC community could follow their adventure.

Snow in April!

Some students celebrated Block Break today by building a snow family on the quad!

Coverage on CC’s “Big Idea”

On April 4th, CC hosted “The Big Idea” in which students presented their entrepreneurial proposals to a judging panel in hopes of winning $50,000 to launch their ventures. Twenty-eight teams submitted proposals.

In first place, winning $38,000, was sophomore Trevor Barron’s team, Brayn. Brayn’s goal is to create the world’s first pocket EEG platform that would allow people with epilepsy to track, manage, and eventually predict epilepsy events using their smartphones.

Second place, along with $10,000, went to Francisco Castro’s team, Artizan of the Andes. This project aims to assist rural populations of Ecuador by creating a market for high-quality handicraft products here in the US.

Winning third place and $2,000, was City Roots (Fredrik Lindseth, Jeremy Harlam, and Sara Birmingham) which plans to sell fresh, local fish and produce using aquaponics.

Congratulations to all three winning teams!

The judges included CC alum and Genscape CEO Matthew Burkley. Genscape did a nice piece on The Big idea: http://www.genscape.com/blog/supporting-innovation-and-entrepreneurialism-%E2%80%98-big-idea%E2%80%99-event-colorado-college.

You can watch an edited version of the live web stream Big Idea event at http://www.coloradocollege.edu/other/bigidea/.

Gratitude

The theme for our twelfth annual Scholarship Appreciation Dinner was gratitude. This dinner is one of my favorite events because it gives all of us an opportunity to publicly thank our scholarship donors for providing access to a CC education to students who couldn’t be here without their support. This year, we are fortunate to have 14 new scholarship funds (11 were matched by the Walton Family Foundation Matching Grant) that provided more than $210,000 in new funds for financial aid. Thanks to all of our scholarship donors!

• The Marion L. Acord Scholarship Fund, Class of 1956 
• The Stephanie and Ed Benton Endowed Scholarship
• Cheryl Schlessman Bennett, Class of 1977, Memorial Scholarship
• David Blackett Memorial Endowed Scholarship
• Irma Budington Endowed Scholarship
• Jay D. Cayton, 1952 and Betty G. (Saunders) Cayton Endowed Scholarship
• Richard F. Celeste Scholarship
• Ian and Susan Griffis Scholarship
• Lofgren Family Memorial Scholarship
• Pohlad Endowed Scholarship
• Harris Sherman Conservation Leadership Scholarship
• Alden ’84 and Thomas ’85 Sulger Endowed Scholarship
• Walton Family Foundation Scholars Fund
• Wold Family Endowed Scholarship