Bulletin

Everyone calls it the “genius award.” The official title is the MacArthur Fellowship, and it’s a cool $625,000, five-year stipend with no strings attached.

Among this year’s recipients, “24 Extraordinarily Creative People Who Inspire Us All”: John Novembre, a biochemistry major who graduated cum laude from Colorado College in 2000. “I’m tremendously honored to have received…

It takes a lot of people to make a hit Broadway show. If you had told Nancy Nagel Gibbs ’71, while she was working in the Armstrong Hall basement, that she would be the producer of the multi-Tony Award winner “Peter and the Starcatcher,” she would have said, “No way.” The Denver native didn’t have…

Will Gadd discovered his future when, as a 14-year-old, he dipped his paddle in the swirling waters of the Athabasca River deep in the Canadian Wilderness. The adventure began that day and it continues for Gadd, a 1990 graduate who majored in political science. “I was going to be a lawyer, but other things called,”…

Working toward a “more caring” approach, Dr. David Buck ’83 believes it’s possible to save billions of dollars while giving the needy better healthcare. “It’s quite a cruel system that can precipitate and maintain homelessness,” said the family physician and healthcare-reform advocate. For more than 25 years, Buck has worked to improve treatment for the…

In 1983, Joe Ellis ’80 was selling T-shirts for a living when he applied for a job with the National Football League’s Denver Broncos. “I overheard that they might be looking for somebody to sell ads in their Gameday magazine, which was the game program,” Joe said. “I got into it. You had to roll…

Monica Mueller ’13 had a Big Idea. She wanted to start a nonprofit that would improve children’s lives through creativity, a plan she pitched during the 2013 Big Idea competition at Colorado College. “We didn’t win, which lit a fire in me to prove them wrong about my concept,” Monica said via email from her…

When Jon Wilson arrives at Homecoming this fall for his 10th reunion — which he plans to do with wife Amy Salm Wilson ’05 by his side — he, like many of his classmates, will be in a very different state of mind than he was at graduation. One year after graduation, Jon was living…

On June 22, 2012, Iain Hyde ’06 was offered a new job. A mitigation specialist with Colorado’s Office of Emergency Management for almost three years, he was promoted to the state’s interim recovery manager position. On June 23, the Waldo Canyon Fire hit just a few miles from Colorado College — evacuating more than 30,000…

Marty Kemmer-Contreras ’85 believes education is a social justice issue. So much so, this combined political science and history major has spent the last decade trying to level the playing field in early childhood education. As director of community relations for Colorado Springs’ Community Partnership for Child Development (CPCD), the local grantee for Head Start,…

Joe E. Mattys ’67 has seen Colorado College from both sides: as a student hungry for the Next Big Question and a teacher eager to pose it. “My first teaching job after my M.A. and a stint in the Army was back at CC,” says Joe, who taught theater from 1972 to 1977. “It was…