Why not build a research facility in Denver and ship it to Antarctica?
CU Denver's Colorado Building Workshop is educating future architects while taking on its most ambitious project yet.
Why not build a research facility in Denver and ship it to Antarctica?
CU Denver's Colorado Building Workshop is educating future architects while taking on its most ambitious project yet.
Tucked into the east side of Livingston Island off the Antarctica Peninsula is the Cape Shirreff field camp. Here, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists gather data on krill populations as part of global conservation efforts.
For three to six months each year, the NOAA scientists work in a monochromatic landscape of black volcanic rock, snow and ice, beneath a sun that never sets and in temperatures as low as -5°F. After finishing this physically taxing work each day, they return to their dilapidated living quarters where they often repair the facilities, remove mold and mildew and mop up standing water.
Thanks to students at the University of Colorado Denver, these rundown facilities will soon be a thing of the past.
Students come into our program wanting to learn about sustainability, so why not send them out to be part of the change they want to make in the world?
– Rick Sommerfeld, Assistant Professor
In spring 2022, 28 architecture students built a new dormitory, kitchen and living room for the scientists. In August, the buildings, which feature privacy, natural lighting and low-maintenance metal cladding, were taken apart, packed into shipping containers and sent on a 7,000-mile trip to Antarctica.
Sommerfeld and students discuss building models.
From left to right: Antonio Valencia, Paola Larios, Caitlin Kennedy and Rick Sommerfe
The students who worked on this project are enrolled in the Colorado Building Workshop (CBW), a design-build certificate program run by CU Denver’s Department of Architecture that combines classroom learning with real-world experience.
Building on the Vision of One Donor
Rick Sommerfeld, assistant professor and the workshop’s director, says that philanthropy has been crucial to CBW’s growth over the years.
"It took one person to see our vision and to understand that the work we were doing was important,” Sommerfeld says. “Don Johnson was the first donor to believe enough to invest in the people and the infrastructure.”
Johnson is the managing trustee of the Dr. C.W. Bixler Family Foundation. Through his initiative, the foundation’s support enabled the program to hire a teaching fellow, Will Koning, who is also a workshop graduate.
“My time as a student in CBW was the formative experience of my architectural education, which continues to this day as the Bixler Fellow,” Koning says. “We have been able to work on important projects in incredible places.”
According to Sommerfeld, the program was able to take on more complex projects after Koning joined.
“Having Will around has been a huge impact to the program,” Sommerfeld explains. “We nearly doubled the number of students we could take on, and we went from working on tiny pavilions to community centers and now the Cape Shirreff project.”
The foundation’s funding also supports scholarships, safety equipment and tools.
Workshop students Jasmine Jones and Caitlin Kennedy
work on a drill press donated by the Dr. C.W. Bixler Family Foundation.
The students work with architecture firms, contractors and suppliers to complete projects that benefit the arts, education or the environment. After the program’s initial successes, architects began to donate time to critique student work while manufacturers provided free or reduced-cost building materials such as triple-pane windows.
“I think people are supportive because they see that we’re giving back and reinvesting in the community,” Sommerfeld says. “We’re able to take a client who has maybe $35,000 dollars for a community stage and deliver a $250,000 project. And we're trying to educate architects and make a better kind of architecture.”
The CBW ensures every donated dollar, pro bono hour and piece of equipment has a maximum impact on student education and the communities where they work.
Sommerfeld says graduates of the design-build program are in high demand from industry partners and architecture firms.
“They call us and ask for our best graduates because they know they’re going to get that added set of skills with our students who have already seen a project through construction and dealt with budgets, developers and the bottom line,” he says.
Sustainability and Environmental Impacts
In December 2022, Sommerfeld and seven CBW alumni will undertake the two-week journey to the Antarctic Peninsula. When they arrive at the Cape Shirreff field camp, they will camp out in tents for two months as they race against the Antarctic winter to reassemble the flat-packed living quarters.
Sommerfeld says the CBW students and alumni are personally invested in the project because they understand how the NOAA scientists’ research into krill populations impacts marine life. Krill serves as the main food source for fur seals, penguins, whales and other animals, making it a key part of the marine life food chain. Overharvesting krill by commercial fisheries can upset this delicate balance.
The NOAA scientists provide their data to the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which works with its 26 member states to set krill harvesting quotas to protect marine ecosystems.
In June 2022, phase one of the Cape Shirreff field camp project was exhibited on the CU Denver campus before it was shipped to Antarctica. Photo by Rob Cleary.
With this in mind, sustainability and environmental impact were also top priorities for the students. Their design substitutes photovoltaic panels for fossil fuel, utilizes 90% recycled stainless steel and features energy saving triple-pane windows. The students also had to consider how to design a building to withstand the Antarctic climate, working closely with a contractor who specializes in Antarctic construction.
According to Sommerfeld, the Cape Shirreff project was an ideal way for students to apply their classroom learning to a real-world environment, albeit one 7,000 miles away.
“Antarctica is a very hard place to be working in right now because large parts of the ice shelf are crumbling into the sea as we speak,” Sommerfeld says. “But I think it’s important that we as architects find ways to do things more sustainably. These students come into our program wanting to learn about sustainability, so why not send them out to be part of the change they want to make in the world?”
Sean Coetzee loved how media forensics—an emerging industry that uses technology to fight crime in the digital age—expanded the realm of what he did as a sound engineer. Yet in late 2013, one year away from completing his master’s at CU Denver in the Media Forensics program, Sean was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. He died only six weeks later at the age of 32.
“When I lost Sean I thought my life was over,” said his wife, Melissa Coetzee.
After months of sleeping, sobbing and binge-watching Netflix, Melissa started to think about Sean’s legacy. The idea of a scholarship in Sean’s name crossed her mind. She pulled herself off the couch, sat in front of her computer and decided to email CU Denver.
How do I create a scholarship? she wrote.
A scholarship in memory of her Sean, who never passed up the chance to browse the racks of a record store. Who played his guitar for hours. Who loved musicians like PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, Sigur Rós, Norah Jones, Queen, Frank Zappa, and the Beatles.
Sean, a citizen of three different countries, master of two languages and relisher of a pint of Guinness.
Sean, the husband who captured her heart when they met in London—they bonded over a shared love of music and live events and never left each other's side for more than a few days since the moment they met.
Melissa realized that if she raised $25,000 a scholarship at CU Denver—a place she had never even visited—would last “in perpetuity.”
In other words, forever. Something tangible that would help generations of CU Denver students who want to make the world a safer, more just place. Just as Sean would have. Melissa had absolutely no idea how to start or if raising $25,000 was even going to be possible. But she had to try.
The first donation was $35 from a friend. A colleague of Sean’s donated $1,000. Their former landlord in London made a donation. Financial contributions came in from all over the globe. Within a year, more than 50 friends, family, colleagues and even complete strangers gave to the scholarship fund to honor Sean, a young man with the big heart and an endless well of kindness.
Sean was especially committed to ethics in media forensics, and he was excited to attend the College of Arts & Media. Even though his life was cut short, that excitement for learning lives on: the first recipient of the Sean P. Coetzee Memorial Scholarship was selected in 2016.
“Education was very important to Sean. If he had lived, he would have been an amazing professor,” said Melissa, who was awarded Sean’s degree posthumously at the CU Denver commencement ceremony in 2014. “Seeing all the people who contributed to the scholarship fund and how much Sean meant to them was very healing and very powerful for me. I know Sean would be proud, too.”
Before there was the state of Colorado, there was the University of Colorado.
Before there was CU, a courageous and tenacious few were so profoundly committed to the transformative power of an education.
The idea of a public university in the young Colorado territory was considered a valuable and worthwhile pursuit as early as 1861. But political disputes, economic distress and local jealousies stalled the idea from becoming a reality for years. Some folks clamored that Colorado didn’t have any use for an academic institution.
But some early settlers never gave up.
First, there was the gift of land. Three Boulder families—Marinus and Annie Smith, George and Mary Andrews, and Anthony and Mary Arnett—collectively donated 51 acres of land on the heights south of Boulder Creek, which was formally accepted in January 1872 by the legislature as the permanent location of the future university.
Funds were still needed for a university building. Bitter rivalries among Colorado’s lawmakers, who wanted their communities selected instead as the home for a public university, continued to embroil the idea for another two years. Then, in January 1874, the Colorado Territorial Legislature agreed to provide $15,000, a sizeable sum in those days, toward a university on the condition Boulder citizens contribute an equal amount.
David Nichols, the territory’s speaker of the house and a Boulder resident, realized he needed to immediately raise the necessary funds, lest his town lose the opportunity.
Legend has it, Nichols said: “If $15,000 is what they want, we’ll get it.”
Like Paul Revere, he rode by horseback that cold and rainy January night for five hours the 30 miles between Denver to Boulder to knock on the doors of ordinary citizens to see if they could—if they would—donate the money.
The fate of CU hung in the balance.
By the time a weary Nichols was back at his legislative seat in Denver the next morning, Boulder residents—104 parties, to be exact—had pledged the funds needed to secure the University of Colorado, and the appropriation bill passed.
Collectively, the citizens of Boulder committed a total of $16,806.66—more than enough to give the fledgling university a permanent home. Pledges ranged from $15 to $1,000. More than half the donors contributed fewer than $100. Finally, after long years of struggle, the University of Colorado was more than an idea—it had sufficient funds to begin the construction of the first university building.
On Sept. 20, 1875, the cornerstone for Old Main was laid. By the following spring, CU officially opened its doors, five months before the Centennial State joined the union in 1876.
After 15 years of effort, and though these early philanthropic contributions placed a true hardship on Boulder’s frontier families, their commitment to education remains an enduring testament to what CU stands for to this day.
It is a legacy upon which we continue to build and honor.
When he graduated in May, William Mundo reached a milestone in his journey at the University of Colorado Denver.
It’s a journey that almost didn’t even start.
It’s good for him—and us—it did.
Before William devoted countless hours to his studies over four years and emerged as one of the university’s most well-known volunteers and respected student leaders, he and his mother had a pivotal conversation about whether he’d even attend college.
“OK,” he recalls her saying. “You want to go to college. None of us have ever done it, but I’ll support you.”
But “it’s $10,000 a year,” he told her.
“We can’t pay that,” she said.
William insisted: “Mom, don’t worry.”
He had a plan.
William’s journey began modestly. Born in Los Angeles to parents who emigrated from Acapulco, Mexico, he and his family eventually moved to Leadville, high in the Colorado mountains. He remembers observing his father treating people in their community, so he assumed his father was a doctor.
“It wasn’t until I was much older that I figured out that my father didn’t get past sixth grade,” William says. “He had to drop out and help the family put food on the table since it was really difficult for my family in Mexico.”
Seeing his father care for his community inspired him: “I want to be a doctor. That really pushed me to pursue that career.”
At CU Denver, he studied public health and ethnic studies with an eye on medical schools. His goals include combating race-based health disparities and improving health care throughout the world, especially for impoverished communities. He’s also considering joining the Air Force with the hope to become a medical doctor in the military.
“I have a passion for serving others,” he says.
These paths wouldn’t have opened to him if he didn’t remain dedicated to his plan—the one he assured his mom would help him attend college.
“This doesn’t happen without scholarships,” William says. “They’ve made it possible for me to come to college and pursue my dream.”
CU Denver-based philanthropy like the Graham Family Scholarships and Alumni Association General Scholarships offered him assistance. So did the Latin American Educational Foundation and The White Rose Scholarship Foundation.
“They have really made an impact on my life because navigating the education system as a first-generation student is very difficult,” he says.
When others cared for him, he discovered the chance to care for others.
“It’s given me hope,” he says, “that there’s still people out there that really care about people like me and want us to do well.”