Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. was founded in Boulder in 1956. Shown here, the primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope, a follow-up to the Hubble Space Telescope set to launch in 2013. Photo courtesy Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.

By Shannon Burgert, Tyera Eulberg and Mary Jarrett

Experts weigh in on compassion, immigration, education and lasers as the Boulder Magazine 30th-Anniversary Interviews continue. The questions we asked:

1. What’s the biggest change you have observed in Boulder, in your field, over the last three decades?

2. What significant trends do you see developing now in the city and county of Boulder?

3. With regard to your specific area of expertise, where do you think we’re headed?

Read the responses of Larry Gold, Ph.D., Bill Cronin, Shawn Camden, Peter Dawson, M.D., Susan Solomon, Ph.D., John Hall, Ph.D., Albert A. Bartlett, Ph.D., Kathy Escamilla, Ph.D., Matthew Bolz-Weber, Eric Jarvis, Ph.D., Gina Day, and Dennis Van Gerven, Ph.D. below.

Larry Gold, Ph.D.
Founder and Chairman, SomaLogic

1. Modern biology (or biochemistry or molecular biology) has undergone an enormous change since 1953 [when Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA], and most of it has happened in the last three decades. The quality and importance of the work done at CU is very high; Tom Cech and Marv Caruthers did work that stimulated positive healthcare changes, and now many faculty are doing the same. Interestingly, during the exact time that research at CU-Boulder has become even more important, the relationship of the University to Boulder and the rest of Colorado has deteriorated. I find this so depressing—our wonderful little town, with great students and faculty and administrators, vilified by people with odd [political] agendas. Research activities are just one way a university stimulates the minds of students, and I fear that our students are not being treated as our most valuable future asset. Support for CU from the state has been unimpressive, and gets less impressive every year—maybe that is about to change.

2. I see Boulder as a city managed by Trustafarians. Boulder is not sustainable in its present form—too many people drive to work from places with more affordable housing, and there’s no deep belief that good jobs matter (Trustafarians don’t need jobs). If the town wants to recreate the kind of outdoor/indoor life that we once had (in 1971, when I arrived), solving the housing crisis—by going vertical, but with taste and creativity—is critical. Once people can live and work in Boulder, everything will get better. Schools will improve, people will bike to work instead of drive, and there will be more shops for average citizens. Small attempts at creating low-cost/affordable housing are not very impressive: The average new worker or faculty member in Boulder is forced to either rent in Boulder or buy a house out of Boulder—not really on target for the widely held American dream.

3. It’s pretty clear that health care (my area of expertise) will change dramatically, even as research discoveries make possible better and earlier disease detection and therapeutic intervention. What ought to happen—better and less expensive health care—seems not to be happening, at least not for most people. The entire country will move inexorably toward rationing health care as the only solution to the growing costs, which will cause all of us to make choices about what medical services to use. Probably the shift will include far more emphasis on chronic diseases, and far less on things like the flu or injuries or far more serious (but “fast”) diseases (like some cancers), where very expensive treatments extend life only slightly and do so at great cost. I see the next decade as forcing our more affluent citizens into the kinds of healthcare decisions now made by the disadvantaged.

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Bill Cronin
Owner, Cronin Jewelers

1. I used to do a lot of spoon rings. Thank God that’s over—now I get to challenge myself more with platinum and diamond-encrusted “Live Simply” pendants! Seriously, the change has been great for my business and allows me to pursue my art of designing and creating jewelry. And through all its changes, we all know Boulder is still a great place to live.

2. People are trying to be more socially responsible with their purchases. With current issues such as the origin of diamonds and gold, people need to know that there are responsible choices.

3. I think people have been so marketed-to in every aspect of their lives that we could be seeing a change. People are beginning to gravitate toward caring more about the integrity and quality of a piece of jewelry, how and where it is made. They are seeking a real connection with the people who create the design and actually do the work.

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Shawn Camden
Program Director and Co-founder, Intercambio de Comunidades

1. The biggest change I have observed is that there is much more interaction between immigrants and native English speakers. The reason we began Intercambio six years ago was because we were noticing that immigrants living in Boulder were so isolated from the rest of the community. Native English speakers had the desire to want to interact with immigrants, but did not know how. Now, thanks to organizations like Intercambio, there are much more positive cultural exchanges and friendships going on. However, I still feel that many immigrants in the community feel isolated and not welcome. But at least there are organizations like Intercambio and Dialogues on Immigrant Integration trying to change this.

The other big change is that there is much more awareness about immigrants working here and making important contributions to our community. Before, people here didn’t even notice them, because immigrants don’t try to make themselves noticeable. Now there are more cultural events organized by immigrants like Ociel Guzman, who organizes the Mother’s Day Celebration at the Boulder Band Shell, which more immigrants attend. This was the first time I had ever seen a large group of Mexican immigrants downtown. More immigrants are starting to take leadership roles and are making sure that their voices are being heard in the community.

3. It is hard to see where we are headed with the hot immigration topics that have been receiving more attention in the political realm. The recent raids and anti-immigrant laws have provoked a lot of fear in the immigrant community, convincing some to return to their native country and others to take action against these new harsh measures and hold their ground. Despite the recent hardships, many still stay because they want a better future for themselves and their families.

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The first Lights of December Parade, 1988. Photo by Ann Duncan

Peter Dawson, M.D.
Pediatrician, People’s Clinic

1. Immigration from Mexico. Two-thirds of the young families I see at People’s Clinic are from Mexico. They are hard workers and great parents, but moving to a new country is a big change. It is for us at the clinic: My Spanish teacher asked if I’ve been to a Spanish-speaking place, and I said, “Sure—Boulder!”

2. We’re losing the middle class. This is a wealthy county, but 20 percent of its families earn less than $25,000, which is less than half of what it really takes to live here. On the other hand, 20 percent of families earn over $110,000. You see many more mansions nowadays.

3. Two things. First, our kids are getting fatter—7 percent of high-school students and 11 percent of the preschoolers I see. Boulder is a skinny town, but we’re not exempt from the national trend. I don’t think the increase is due to a lack of personal willpower; it’s due to the fattening environment we live in. Second, our kids have psychological problems, and few of them get help. Seventeen percent of our high-school students have seriously considered suicide. Nationwide, 12 percent of kids have serious emotional problems, and few get care. The budget cuts to the Mental Health Center have been painful.

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Susan Solomon, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist, NOAA

1. It’s been wonderful to see how many new young scientists we now have in Boulder, working on atmospheric chemistry and climate—and even better, the gender balance has shifted and we have a lot of bright young women as well as men now. Boulder has become even more of a mecca for atmospheric science than it was when I came here in 1977, and that has been exciting. The amount of important work going on at many different institutions all around town is incredible­—no other place in the world has the density of excellence in atmospheric science that we have, and those wonderful colleagues are why I’m still here.

2. People in Boulder have been concerned to take care of the environment as long as I can remember. But now we’re going even farther, beyond our backyard and our greenbelt, to be interested in the global scale. Boulder’s climate initiative is a remarkable thing for a community to commit to, and to have voted for.

3. Hard to answer this one....I’ll take a pass.

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John Hall, Ph.D.
CU, JILA (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2005)

1. The Boulder labs of NIST got into measuring the frequency of lasers, and that was a gold mine. When NIST first measured the speed of light, it led to the dream of using light as a defining quality—everyone could agree on using the speed of light as a definition of length. It was our bread and butter for a while-—how to measure frequency in a convenient way. We developed an optical frequency comb, with regularly spaced optical frequencies that more or less look like a comb. It’s a very efficient way to measure.

3. We’re moving as fast as our little foots can carry us. There are a lot of active people working on optical frequency clocks, based on atoms. The optical frequency comb gives us a way to relate to that; we can compare laser sources. We are getting more precision, and we don’t know the limits. The future is going to rapidly show up here, where one has considerably more precision than we did. It’s going to be fascinating to see whether the numbers and equations in physics are really the way we’ve thought about and taught them. For some things we just have words. A lot of fields are merging, like astrophysics, astronomy, atomic physics, particle physics, philosophy, and natural philosophy.

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Filmmaker Stan Brakhage painting film in BJ’s Restaurant. Photo by Kai Sibley

Albert A. Bartlett, Ph.D.
CU Professor Emeritus of Physics; lecturer on population and sustainability

1. In my field of science, the biggest change in Boulder in the last 30 years is the enormous increase in the quality and size of the scientific community.

2. At present, the significant trend in the city and county of Boulder is the quiet continuation and encouragement of population growth in the face of limited and declining resources (petroleum, natural gas, electricity, water, clean air, locally grown food … ) that are vital to human survival. In a profound internal contradiction, we are committing ourselves to reducing our annual emissions of greenhouse gases while we are increasing our population, yet everyone knows that larger populations produce larger quantities of greenhouse gases. This unsustainable development is being advanced in the name of sustainability. Most discouraging is the fact that this is happening in a community that has one of the highest levels of education in the country.

3. I think we are headed toward a society that is becoming more and more scientific and technical, while most of the people who guide and govern our society seem to understand less and less about science and technology. Our society is becoming ever more dependent on science, ever more complex, ever more undemocratic, ever more unmanageable, ever more vulnerable to disruption, and ever more unsustainable, all because of our growing population and our growing dependence on declining resources such as water, fossil fuels, etc.

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Kathy Escamilla, Ph.D.
Professor of Education, CU

1. In education, Boulder County has become more diverse economically and linguistically over the past decade. This has created opportunities, as well as challenges, for the Boulder Valley Schools and for teacher-education programs at CU. Boulder Valley Schools has responded in a mostly positive way to this growing diversity, creating several programs that represent the state of the art as responses to linguistic diversity. These include dual-language programs at Pioneer Elementary School and University Hill, and bilingual education at Columbine.

2. Boulder County continues to be on the cutting edge in education. A challenge may be to make sure that the county’s many homogeneous, majority-white schools have well-developed programs in multicultural education, so that these students develop a broad world view and a respect for diversity.

3. I am hopeful that we will see a growing awareness that diversity in a community is positive—that having linguistic and economic diversity in a school is an opportunity and an advantage. I hope that we have turned the corner and will not place such undue emphasis on standardized assessment as a way to judge the worth of a school or a child.

Matthew Bolz-Weber
Associate Pastor, Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Longmont

1. The biggest change, from my perspective, is the proliferation of spirituality types. Thirty years ago was about when conservative Christianity started to get politically active. I think more liberal-minded folks tended to react to that trend by either leaving church or by finding justification for not participating in the first place. The language is across the country now, but the Boulder area was at the front of the trend toward “I’m a spiritual person, but I don’t like church” statements.

More recently, though, I see liberal Christians becoming more vocal about their faith and beliefs. I especially see progressive Christians guided by their faith into social action and consciousness.

2. Building, building, building. There is a huge housing explosion, especially here in Longmont. Trouble is, building houses on land that used to be farmland removes us farther and farther from any connection to the land—and in my faith tradition, from our stewardship of the gift of the Earth. On the other hand, a lot of folks around here are critically concerned about global stewardship; they shop at farmers’ markets and keep the agricultural history of Boulder County alive. Others are working on renewable energy and resources, both in their personal lives and in their professional contexts.

3. I think we’re headed to a crisis of faith, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. As people of faith wrestle with the reality of needing to reconcile a faith handed down from their ancestors with the realities of the world we live in, a new Christian spirituality will emerge—one that is rooted in history and tradition, while at the same time practicing care for the poor and the stranger and the Earth. I’m not naïve enough to believe that a trend like this will be universal, but I hope it will have an impact on our little corner of the world.

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Allen Ginsberg at Naropa University. Photo by Steve Miles

Eric Jarvis, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist, NREL

1. In the late 1970s, Boulder was a hot spot for early adopters of renewable energy and provided a talent pool for the newly established Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory) in Golden. After a couple of decades of national apathy, renewable energy and energy-efficiency technologies are once again at the forefront, primarily due to our realization of the seriousness of global warming.

2. Boulder and the state are stepping up to the plate in terms of citizen action, legislation, and research and development. For example, Boulder adopted a Climate Action Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the state level, the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory is pulling together CU, CSU, the School of Mines, NREL and private industry to accelerate renewable energy research along the Front Range.

3. Boulder has a unique convergence of scientific and engineering talent, entrepreneurial spirit, and passionate concern for the environment. It seems our community has a tremendous opportunity to lead the nation in research, development, and deployment of sustainable-energy technologies.

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Gina Day
Former CEO/President of Boulder Beer

1. I’ve been here 30 years too. In that time there’s been huge growth all along Highway 36 into Boulder. On the flip side, open-space regulation in the city has been able to control it in some respects, so there’s a yin and a yang.

     The beer business has been a story of growth as well, but it’s been a bell curve. Boulder Beer started out as a phenomenon. We’ve been in business since the 1970s, when microbreweries were unheard of, but local brews from small establishments caught on. The industry peaked in 1994 and 1995 with all sorts of competition, both from within and out of the state. Then, at the end of the bell curve, things settled down. From 1997 to 2000, microbreweries peaked out. The survivors in the industry have hung on as the rush has waned. These guys are probably here to stay.

2. What’s nice to see is that the microbrew isn’t a fad; it’s the biggest-growing category of beer. The clientele in Boulder reflects why. Boulder is a unique place. People are sophisticated in their tastes, and educated. They want something specific or local or sustainable.

3. Like a lot of other Boulder products, Boulder Beer is expanding over the country. Our growth is not only regional, but on the West Coast, Midwest and the East Coast.

    As for the city, I see the growth continuing. But I see it done in a way that’s conducive to the environment and the people. You hate to see Boulder get priced out; it’s sad. But Boulder residents support the whole community by keeping the open space we started with 30 years ago, supporting nonprofits and expanding our culture. There’s CU, and Naropa is accredited now. The Colorado Music Festival is huge. They’re looking at building a new College of Music facility. Boulder is unique, with unpretentious people that want art, culture and education around them, and I hope that continues for another 30 years.

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A crowd of 30,000 watches the final stage of the 1978 Red Zinger Classic, then the richest amateur bike race in the world. Photo by Joe Daniel courtesy Carnegie Branch Library for Local History, Boulder, Colorado

Dennis Van Gerven, Ph.D
Professor of Anthropology, CU

1. It’s bigger and more crowded. In terms of the university, there have been some good changes and bad. The university is a better place than it was, but it’s an uphill battle. It’s a little browner, and the Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender community is stronger than it used to be. But diversity is the first thing cut. We bring in all these students for diversity days, and we offer no way for them to be here; we don’t give them the support they need to stay. We’re struggling to find funding, and we have to do more and more on less and less. Tuition is growing fast, and it’s harder for working-class students to find a way to be here. But the academics and the community still set this campus apart. We’re better, but we’re not anywhere near where we should be.

2. I’m weary of the priorities that seem to be set, and that places like the People’s Clinic, Emergency Family Assistance, the Homeless Shelter and Safehouse have to struggle. We talk a good game, as if we’re incredibly liberal and socially conscious. But if you count the number of people in Boulder who are homeless and working, it will make you cry, and I only see things getting worse. We’re mounting a war against the weak and the scared and the disenfranchised. I don’t see it any different in Boulder than anywhere else.

I’m less interested in another mile of red-brick islands and artistic overpasses than I am interested in supporting services like People’s Clinic and Emergency Family Assistance. I’d like to hear Boulder say, “We’re not going to build 10 more miles of bike path until we have more beds for the homeless.” Boulder’s beautiful on the outside and it can be more beautiful on the inside, more caring and generous.

3. It was easy to be liberal in the ’60s because it was easy to operate under the illusion that there was enough for everybody. To have enough, the people at the very top need to make some serious sacrifices. I see Boulder as a microcosm of the same forces operating at a national level. We wonder why kids choose to go under this general anesthesia of alcohol. They suspect there aren’t two atoms of honesty in the world around them, from the highest position in the country on down. They see a world that’s not a pretty place, and so they make it pretty on the inside through drugs and drinking, and it’s a tragic waste of humanity.

On the good side, I’m seeing more and more people who are retiring young and coming onto campus. They’re a great resource at the university. We don’t just need to be browner and gayer; we also need to be grayer. I want to see wrinkles and double chins and jowls!

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