Adam Lujan, Aidan McCarthy and Victoria Romejko are the student filmmakers behind “Life Walks,” a documentary about photography professor Roddy MacInnes. Photo courtesy of Roddy MacInnes

Undergraduate and graduate students in the Documentary Film and Video Production II class in the Department of Media, Film and Journalism Studies have spent the spring quarter conceiving, pitching, filming and editing short documentaries on a variety of topics. The teams present their final products Thursday, June 4, in Davis Auditorium in Sturm Hall. A reception begins at 6 p.m., followed by the screenings at 7 p.m. Admission is free. (More information)

The films cover the gamut in terms of topics, from homeless children in Denver to local blacksmiths who are keeping the craft alive. One filmmaking team turned their lenses a little closer to home, focusing their documentary on DU photography professor Roddy MacInnes.

“I first took an interterm class with [MacInnes] to Paris and London last winter break, in 2013,” says senior film major Adam Lujan. “The first time I ever met him was in Paris, and immediately I recognized that he was a really interesting person who was very unique and exciting to be around. He has a sort of infectious joy and this really big personality, and he makes you want to be a better person just by being around him.”

The student documentary is centered around an all-day class MacInnes led on Fridays during spring quarter. Dubbed “Life Walks” by the professor, the class took photography students on weekly field trips to various locations around Colorado, including Fairmount Cemetery, the Wild Animal Sanctuary in Keenesburg, the Denver Botanic Gardens and photography galleries in Fort Collins.

“Their assignment is just to document the day and their experiences,” says Lujan, who also is assistant entertainment editor at the Clarion. “The way Roddy describes it is he sees photography as another lens to look at your life, and that you can use photography to look at your life in a different way, a bigger way. He is interested in bringing people together in the shared idea that photography binds everyone together. We have a lot of shared experiences, and we can use the same tool to share the experiences.”

In addition to MacInnes, the filmmakers interviewed current and former students to create their film. They cut 40 hours of footage to a 15-minute final product, sharing their progress with their classmates along the way.

“I think one of the most interesting things about film classes in general is that students have a lot of creative control over their work, and the feedback that they get from their professors is equal to that of their fellow students,” Lujan says. “It’s not like the professor is the only authority and the only person whose opinion matters about your creative work.”

After graduating on June 6, Lujan plans to spend some time writing and traveling before applying to graduate school to further study filmmaking. His longtime interest in movies has focused primarily on fiction films, but the documentary class, he says, has opened his eyes to the power of real stories.

“The biggest reward has been introducing people to Roddy who never knew him and seeing how quickly people can get invested in him and his life,” Lujan says. “A lot of people in my class have never met him, they’ve never taken a class with him, but just by watching our documentary, they feel like they know him. They feel like they have access to this really great person. That’s our biggest goal.”

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After interning for global investment firm Goldman Sachs in summer 2014, Carly Westerfield received an offer to work in the company’s New York office as a junior operations analyst. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

University of Denver undergraduates know that internships pay off in ways large and small — gaining skills, building a network, getting real-world experience — but every once in a while an internship pays off in a really big way: with a job offer after graduation.

Recent graduate Carly Westerfield, who in March received a BSBA in finance from the Daniels College of Business, is part of that fortunate group. After interning for global investment firm Goldman Sachs in summer 2014, she received an offer to work in the company’s New York office as a junior operations analyst. She’s moving to Manhattan in July, thanks to her performance in what, she says, the company describes as a “10-week job interview.”

“You know at the end of the summer you’re either going to get a job offer or you’re not; that’s understood,” says Westerfield, who interned in the company’s office in Salt Lake City, Utah. “Sometimes the pressure is a lot.”

Much of that pressure, she says, comes from the fact that the internship has college students doing the same work as actual Goldman Sachs employees, sometimes putting in 65-hour weeks to get the job done.

“You’re not just making photocopies or running to get coffee — you’re actually doing work, and it has an impact,” she says. “It’s very cool for that reason, because it’s the first time you’re ever recognized for your education.”

Westerfield says it was fascinating to see things she learned in the classroom come to life in the real world, but she also notes that some of the skills she gained were more intangible.

“So much more of what made you successful in the internship had to do with how personable you were, how you present yourself,” she says. “These are things that you should be picking up throughout college, but there’s no class for that.”

Westerfield grew up in Maine and came to DU because it “had everything I wanted in a school. They had a great business school, and I came to visit and it was beautiful — all of the things that you look for.”

She says she is interested to see where the next chapters of her life take her — though she knows that if she plays her cards right, she may never have to go to another job interview.

“During the summer [internship], we would have talks every week from senior managers who would talk about when they were an intern 20, 30, 40 years ago, and here they are today — they were retiring five years from now. And it hit me that this really could be it for me if I wanted it to be,” she says. “I know how lucky I would be if that were my story, but I know that there are other interests that I have and there’s more out there.

“You don’t know what other doors will open, but it’s kind of an amazing thing knowing that this could be my one and only job.”

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“I think a lot of people realize how important it is to give back a little bit,” says Brian Ketterman. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

Brian Ketterman got an early introduction to the spirit of community service that is so important at the University of Denver.

A member of the University’s Pioneer Leadership Program (PLP), Ketterman spent his first year on campus immersed in the idea that “to serve is to lead.” The program requires each student to serve his or her community, and Ketterman — now a junior majoring in biology and psychology, with his eye on medical school— did so at Denver’s Craig Hospital, which specializes in treating patients with severe spinal and brain injuries.

“The best part about it — and this is one of those things that really made me want to volunteer more — is the nature of the place,” he says. “It’s easy to think it’s going to be a really depressing environment, but I went there every day, and that was the opposite of the way it actually is. Everybody had an incredible attitude, and it was absolutely infectious.”

In his sophomore year, as part of another PLP project, Ketterman helped establish a program that teaches parents in a low-income Denver neighborhood the importance of reading to their children. He logged his service hours for the 1864 Service Challenge, a sesquicentennial initiative in which alumni, faculty, staff and students aimed for a combined total of 186,400 service hours to reflect the University’s founding in 1864. The challenge came to a close in March 2015 with 385,832 total hours logged.

This year, Ketterman is volunteering at Swedish Hospital near DU; he also tutors children once a week at a local elementary school. It’s all a continuation, he says, of that first year on campus, when he learned the importance of service.

“It’s cool to see everybody who stuck with it,” he says of his peers in PLP. “I think a lot of people realize how important it is to give back a little bit.”

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For 10 weeks this spring, the head PR office for local nonprofit Slow Food Denver (SFD) was located in a classroom in DU’s Media, Film and Journalism Studies Building.

As part of a spring quarter seminar, undergraduate and graduate students in the strategic communications program partnered with the nonprofit organization, which focuses on linking communities with food sources and on creating a more just and sustainable food system throughout the region. (SFD is the Denver chapter of the Italy-based global organization Slow Food International.)

Working in two separate teams, seminar students acted as SFD’s public relations agency, choosing key audiences to target to raise awareness and strategizing on how to increase membership. They also helped create an ambassador program, slated to debut this summer. The program will send people committed to the slow-food lifestyle into various Denver communities to promote the organization and its work. Students met with SFD’s staff and board of directors May 28 to present their final plans.

“It feels very real-world; it’s very applicable to what a PR agency actually does — working with clients and making sure we are integrating the feedback that they give us and what their wants and needs are, and making sure that we’re very cognizant of those, instead of it being a theoretical plan with an unlimited budget and unlimited time and a staff of 20 to implement it,” says Carley St. Clair, a first-year strategic communications graduate student. “This is a very real organization with very real limitations that we have to bear in mind.”

The project took students off campus and into the city: The SFD office is in the Source, a converted brick foundry in north Denver that houses a collective of restaurants, retailers and artisan food shops. And as a networking exercise, the class attended a barbecue at the home of an SFD member, who treated the students to locally sourced pizza made in a backyard pizza oven.

“That’s something else that’s really cool: We’re part of the community now,” St. Clair says. “We’re not just DU students, but we’re residents of Denver who are able to go out and work in the place where we live. It’s fun.”

Erika Polson, the assistant professor who leads the seminar, says she was guided in part by her students’ interest in food issues when picking a nonprofit for the class to work with.

“We’re interested in fulfilling DU’s vision of being a private university dedicated to the public good, so my first thought is ‘How can we use our class and what our students are learning to help an organization with their own communication needs?’” she says.

“My goal as the professor is to strategically choose an organization that has a mission that I think is going to teach something really great to our students as well. [The students are] all learning about sustainable food and food cultures and food traditions and building communities around food as a part of this class. I really like that part. I don’t pick just any nonprofit; I think about the students’ futures as community members and understanding what it’s like to be part of a really local and yet global organization,” she adds.

Polson also thinks about her students’ professional lives after DU, and how to expose them to the different arenas in which their strategic communications degrees will prove useful.

“Strategic communication is a skill that can be applied in so many ways,” Polson says. “Everyone’s aware of the ways you can apply it in a corporate environment, but I don’t think the students are aware of all the opportunities in a more community-oriented, nonprofit-oriented, activist-oriented way that they can actually have really meaningful careers.”

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Owned and operated by DU alumni, the Kuwait Park Burger opened in April. Photo courtesy of BusinessDen

Two University of Denver graduates have taken Park Burger to the Middle East.

The Denver burger chain opened its first franchise in Kuwait in April, and the restaurant’s success could lead to more locations outside Colorado.

The 1,400-square-foot store cost about $500,000 to open, according to co-owner Abdullah Alghanem (BSBA ’13). Financing for the project was supported by the Kuwaiti government.

Alghanem and his business partner, Fahad Alsebaie (BSBA ’13), got the idea to bring Park Burger home to Kuwait while they were undergraduate students at DU’s Daniels College of Business.

“We had most of our meals at restaurants, but our favorite was Park Burger on Pearl Street,” Alghanem says. “It’s safe to say we were addicted to it. We saw the opportunity to bring our favorite restaurant back home.”

Alghanem and Alsebaie met with Park Burger’s owner, Jean-Philippe Failyau, and operations director Peter Newlin and discussed the idea of opening a franchise in Kuwait. Failyau and Newlin traveled to Kuwait last summer to assess Park Burger’s viability there.

“We liked the idea and saw the opportunity, so we took it,” Newlin says. “We’re excited to see how it turns out.”

The Kuwaiti duo found a third partner in Fahad Alrefae and opened Park Burger in Kuwait’s capital on April 10.

The location’s menu was slightly tweaked to appeal to religious and cultural differences in the country.

“We’re utilizing a lot of fresh fruit, and we have a full juice bar in the restaurant,” Newlin says. “As far as bacon and other things like that, we’re using beef bacon. We developed some house-made sauces as well.”

The pair ended up at DU thanks to a recommendation from Alsebaie’s brother, Abdulaziz, who received his BSBA from the Daniels College of Business in 2009.

“Daniels College made the biggest difference in our lives,” says Alghanem, citing Tracy Xu, Vaneesha Boney and Maclyn Clouse as professors who helped get the Kuwait Park Burger off the ground. “It helped us figure out how to get a restaurant from the states to open in Kuwait. The classes we took during our finance degree taught us how to build a business; our business law class taught us to how be ethical in your business; and the strong accounting classes gave us the ability to start our business with no need for an accountant because we know how to deal with numbers.”

There’s a lot riding on the success of the Kuwait Park Burger. The company is keeping tabs on the location’s performance to assess the viability of franchising.

“We want to focus on making sure that this one is a success and then go from there,” Newlin says.

But Alghanem and his partners are optimistic.

“We are planning to spread all over Kuwait and open more and more branches,” he says.

This story first appeared on BusinessDen.com

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“It was about getting to the root of, ‘How do you make a positive impact? What are the issues in the community?’ It’s a work in progress, because communities are always changing,” Olga Garcia says of her work at Coors Brewing Co. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

Olga Garcia has found a second home at Museo de las Americas, the Denver-based museum and community center dedicated to Latino art and culture. Sitting in the museum’s gallery, surrounded by the colorful, geometrically precise paintings of Mexican artist Gunther Gerzso, she talks about the importance of the museum to her personally — she is a longtime board member who met her husband at the Museo — and to Denver’s young Latino community.

“It’s much more than a museum; the backbone of this organization really is education,” says Garcia, who was involved in the institution’s founding in 1991. “[The staff creates] curriculum and works with Denver Public Schools, they have a team of teachers who go out to communities in our six-county area, and there are school tours that come in. We have a three-week summer camp program, and it’s more than just learning about art. It’s more about career aspirations — what does it take to run a business like this? There’s a business behind everything. We need accountants, we need lawyers; we need everybody to come together and do what they love.”

Connecting with diverse communities is nothing new to Garcia — she has made a career out of it. She worked for 25 years at Coors Brewing Co. in Golden, Colo., serving from 2006–10 as manager of diversity and inclusion in the company’s human resources department. A master’s degree in applied communications from DU’s University College helped her hone her skills.

“We worked with the Latino, African-American and LGBT communities, women’s organizations — we had specific programming that resonated with those communities, and I think that helped us build a strong foundation to go forward with,” says Garcia, pointing to the National Hispana Leadership Institute and other organizations for which Coors was a founding corporate sponsor. “It was about getting to the root of, ‘How do you make a positive impact? What are the issues in the community?’ It’s a work in progress, because communities are always changing.”

For her work at Museo, Denver Health and elsewhere, Garcia was honored in May by Denver’s Latina First Foundation, which named her one of four “Unsung Heroines” in the local Latino community.

“I was very honored to be in the company of such great leaders,” she says. “I think it’s an opportunity for the foundation to highlight what Latina leaders are doing in our community, and that no matter the area, we’re contributing and making a difference in a way that can be appreciated. It’s good to spotlight what has been done and what still needs to be done.”

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After interning for global investment firm Goldman Sachs in summer 2014, Carly Westerfield received an offer to work in the company’s New York office as a junior operations analyst. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

University of Denver undergraduates know that internships pay off in ways large and small — gaining skills, building a network, getting real-world experience — but every once in a while an internship pays off in a really big way: with a job offer after graduation.

Recent graduate Carly Westerfield, who in March 2015 received a BSBA in finance from the Daniels College of Business, is part of that fortunate group. After interning at global investment firm Goldman Sachs’ Utah outpost in summer 2014, she received an offer to work in the company’s New York office as a junior operations analyst. She started the job in July.

Q: It sounds like this was a pretty intense internship where you were essentially competing with other interns. What was that like?

A: I felt a little bit of competition because you know at the end of the summer you’re either going to get a job offer or you’re not. That’s understood. They tell you, “This is a 10-week job interview.” You’re constantly thinking about how you can differentiate yourself. Sometimes the pressure is a lot.

Q: Did it feel like a real job in that sense? What were your responsibilities? Were you working 40 hours a week?

A: The most I ever worked was 65 hours in a week. It didn’t feel that nuts; it just felt good and right. I wanted to stay late. You’re not just making photocopies or running to get coffee — you’re actually doing work, and it has an impact. It’s very cool for that reason, because it’s the first time you’re ever recognized for your education.

Q: What was it like to see things you had learned about in the classroom come to life in the real world?

A: That happened, but so much more of what made you successful in the internship had to do with how personable you were, how you present yourself. The interviews are so rigorous because they want to make sure that you are a hard worker — that you actually are going to be able to sustain yourself for the duration of the summer. You have to be smart, you have to do well in all your classes, but it’s so much more about what you bring to the table.

Q: Were you immediately aware of what a great opportunity the internship was, or did that take a little while to realize?

A: At the very beginning, I definitely came to it with this whole “sell it to me” kind of attitude; I was like, “This is great, but I want to know what you guys can do for me.” But by the end of the summer, I was smitten with it — the company really does treat you so well, and I was aware of how lucky I would be if I were to be offered a position. The reality of how competitive it was and how lucky I was to even have an internship kind of set in. I remember thinking, “I really don’t know what I would do if they offered me a full-time job. I don’t know if I could say yes fast enough.”

Q: Do you plan to stay at Goldman Sachs for the long haul, or are you looking at this as a springboard to other positions in other companies?

A: During the summer [internship], we would have talks every week from senior managers who would talk about when they were an intern 20, 30, 40 years ago and here they are today — they were retiring five years from now. And it hit me that this really could be it for me if I wanted it to be. I know how lucky I would be if that were my story, but I know that there are other interests that I have and there’s more out there. You don’t know what other doors will open, but it’s kind of an amazing thing knowing that this could be my one and only job.

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“That’s what I really get passionate about, is when we can take an issue and we can find a solution and connect the two in a way that utilizes people’s rights through government and is also meaningful and helps communities,” says Jessica Davidson. Photo: Cam Welch

No one is as surprised as Jessica Davidson that she ended up not only a political science major, but vice president of DU’s Undergraduate Student Government as well.

“When I was a kid, my parents’ friends — as everybody tells children — would say, ‘One day you’ll be president of the United States,’” recalls Davidson, who is pursuing a BA in political science and a concurrent master’s of public policy degree through DU’s 4+1 program. “And because I heard adults say this all the time, I would say, ‘Whatever; I hate politics.’ I had no idea what that meant, but I used to say it all the time as a kid.”

That all changed Davidson’s first year at DU, when a first-year seminar with political science professor Peter Hanson sparked a passion for politics that led her to student government and a possible future career in policy analysis.

“A big part of it also came from the presidential debate being here on campus my freshman year,” Davidson says of her interest in politics. “I actually ended up getting a ticket at the last minute, and on the floor of the debate I met Sen. Mark Udall and I told him I was interested in the law and that I was taking a politics class, and he offered me an internship on the spot. The following fall I interned for his office, and that’s when I really started to become very invested in politics. And I haven’t looked back since.”

Davidson joined DU’s Undergraduate Student Government as a senator her sophomore year and “had a really great experience, but when I ended the year I didn’t really feel satisfied,” she says. “I felt like there was a lot more that could have been done.” So in spring 2015, she and junior Cameron Hickert ran for — and won — the election for USG vice president and president, respectively. Their term begins in fall quarter 2015.

Her passion for politics also has taken Davidson to an internship with a Denver-based lobbying firm, as well as to Uganda, where, thanks to a DU research grant, she traveled in summer 2015 to conduct research for the Global Livingston Institute on the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Davidson says law school may be in her future someday, but for now she aspires to a position as a policy analyst for a senator or a congress member.

“It would be fun to serve as an elected official, but I don’t know that elected officials are always those who are making the most change and are making the most decisions,” she says. “It really is their advisors who are saying, ‘This is exactly what the policy is and how it’s going to impact people.’ That’s what I really get passionate about, is when we can take an issue and we can find a solution and connect the two in a way that utilizes people’s rights through government and is also meaningful and helps communities.”

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Fans cheered on the men’s lacrosse teams at watch parties around the DU neighborhood, including one at the Crimson and Gold Tavern. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

For coach Bill Tierney, the secret to getting his University of Denver men’s lacrosse team to stay focused and relaxed before the program’s first national championship game was to do nothing at all.

On May 25, Tierney’s Pioneers faced off against the University of Maryland Terrapins at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field. It was the third straight year that Tierney and the Pioneers had reached the Division I tournament’s Championship Weekend. In each of the prior tournaments, the Pioneers had come up just short. So Tierney resolved to make a change by not changing anything at all.

“This year we just said, ‘nothing different,’” he says. “We just treated it like any other trip.”

That meant ditching previous gimmicks Tierney had used to fire up his team. Gone were motivational speakers like then-Denver Broncos wide receiver Wes Welker. Gone too were the beards the players grew last year before losing in the semifinals. Or the superstition that they shouldn’t touch the Big East tournament trophy in fear that it might jinx their chances of winning the bigger one that goes to national champions.

Tierney’s insistence on boring routine even filtered down to the team’s meals — the players ate breakfast nearly every day at the same restaurant across the street from the hotel.

That emphasis on normalcy had paid off one game earlier, when the Pioneers were tested by Notre Dame in the semifinals.

Despite blowing a big lead and being forced into overtime, Tierney says his players weren’t rattled. “The huddle was very calm,” he says. “We knew all we needed to do was score one goal.”

Which they did. Which led to the showdown against No. 6-seeded Maryland, a game watched by students in a half-dozen sponsored parties near campus and by alumni at get-togethers in a dozen cities around the country, from Atlanta to Seattle.

In contrast to the nail-biter against Notre Dame, the Pioneers were dominant in the final. The tournament’s most outstanding player, Wesley Berg, scored five goals, while senior goaltender Ryan LaPlante registered 13 saves in the 10-5 victory, a game in which the Pioneers never trailed. After the final whistle sounded, the Pioneers mobbed each other on the field, then took turns cutting off parts of the net and tucking the souvenirs into their shorts for safekeeping as the celebration continued.

Among the many spectators in the stands was Chancellor Rebecca Chopp, whose first year at the DU helm ended with the Pioneers becoming the first school west of the Appalachians to claim the men’s lacrosse title.

“Being in Philadelphia and watching Coach Tierney lead our team to victory was an absolute highlight of my first year as chancellor,” Chopp says.

Chopp was joined by Tierney, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, Chancellor Emeritus Dan Ritchie and hundreds of Pioneers lacrosse fans at a May 26 campus rally celebrating the victory. Hancock’s enthusiasm about the win extended to taking a selfie with members of the team.

“This achievement helps to bring together the whole DU community — students, faculty, staff , alumni and friends,” Chopp says.

Alumnus Charles Dorison (BA ’72) agrees. “For many of the alums I joined in Philly, it was the best DU sports weekend of our lives,” he says. Adds fellow alumnus Tom Douglis (BA ’86), “Some of the students told me it was not only one of their best days at DU, but one of the best days of their lives.”

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Due in mailboxes in early September, the University of Denver Magazine fall 2015 issue is available online now. Read stories about the men’s lacrosse NCAA victory, DU’s new Knoebel Center for the Study of Aging, Chancellor Chopp’s inauguration focus on access and impact, new engineering school dean JB Holston and more.

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The Israeli Vertigo Dance Company performs Oct. 17 as part of the Newman Center Presents series. Photo: Gadi Dagon

As classes begin again, so do a host of concerts, plays and art exhibits at venues around the University of Denver campus. Here’s a look at what’s happening in the DU arts scene this fall.

MUSIC

On the south side of campus, the Newman Center for the Performing Arts hosts performances from touring artists around the globe, as well as showcasing the talent of faculty and students from DU’s own Lamont School of Music.

The Newman Center Presents concert series brings a number of dancers and musicians to the venue this fall, including modern dance pioneer Twyla Tharp, celebrating her 50th anniversary in dance (Sept. 24–25); the Israeli Vertigo Dance Company (Oct. 17); Great American Songbook interpreter Michael Feinstein (Oct. 22); a cappella ensemble Anonymous 4, performing songs from the American Civil War (Nov. 15); and a special holiday show with the Boston Brass (Dec. 2).

The highlight of the Lamont School’s schedule is fall musical “Guys and Dolls,” featuring singers from the opera program and the musicians of the Lamont Symphony Orchestra (Nov. 5–8). The free Flo’s Underground series, featuring student musicians and singers from the Lamont jazz program, starts at 5 p.m. Fridays, Oct. 23–Nov. 13, in the Williams Recital Hall.

Other fall concerts at Lamont include the Lamont Symphony Orchestra with new faculty members Matthew Zalkind, cello, and Matthew Plenk, tenor, on Oct. 13; a faculty recital featuring jazz composer, trombonist and Lamont faculty member Steve Wiest and his new jazz combo, Phröntrange, on Oct. 21; and guest artist Percunova, a percussion-heavy world music ensemble, on Oct. 22.

A quarter-ending series of free concerts showcases student musicians in the Lamont Jazz Orchestra (Nov. 9); the Lamont Percussion Ensemble (Nov. 10); Lamont String Chamber Ensembles (Nov. 11); the Lamont Chorale, Lamont Women’s Chorus and Lamont Men’s Choir (Nov. 12); Lamont World Music & Dance, featuring songs from India and West Africa (Nov. 13); the student new music ensemble Modern Hue (Nov. 14); and the Lamont Steel Drum Ensemble (Nov. 16).

The Lamont Composers Series Concert (Nov. 15) features works composed by Lamont students, while the Lamont Symphony Orchestra’s Salute to Shakespeare (Nov. 19) spotlights two works inspired by Shakespeare plays: Antonín Dvořák’s Othello Concert Overture, Op. 93, and the Dmitri Shostakovich score from the 1964 film “Hamlet.”

The Newman Center also is host on Sept. 19 to TEDx Mile High’s fall event, titled “Ideas at Play.” Three DU alumni — Kristen Race, founder of Mindful Life, which provides “brain-based solutions” for schools, businesses, children and families; Camp Bow Wow founder Heidi Ganahl; and Eric Kornacki, co-founder of local food-justice nonprofit Re:Vision — are on the speaker list, along with musicians, poets, designers, scientists, researchers, entrepreneurs and more.

VISUAL ART AND EXHIBITS

The primary venue for visual art at the University of Denver is the Vicki Myhren Gallery in the Shwayder Art Building, which hosts two major exhibits this fall.

“Recent Gifts to the University Art Collections” (Aug. 27–Sept. 27) celebrates recent gifts to the University Art Collections, including one of the largest and most ambitious paintings by modern art legend and former DU art school leader Vance Kirkland; an anonymous Hudson Valley School landscape dating from around 1850; and a selection of Southwestern and Native American works donated by the late Helen Driscoll. Newly conserved English landscape watercolors donated by alumna Elaine Long also will be on view, along with prints by Thomas Nast, James McNeill Whistler and Andy Warhol.

Annabeth Rosen, who currently holds an endowed chair at the University of California-Davis, will be working with DU students as the Hamilton Visiting Artist for 2014–15. The Myhren Gallery show “Annabeth Rosen: The whole is equal…” (Oct. 8–Nov. 15) will feature a series of her bundled and collected ceramic handmade “found” objects, along with one large piece and a selection of large-scale drawings.

Educational and history-focused exhibits are on display this fall at the Anderson Academic Commons (AAC), among them a pair of related exhibits focusing on the performing arts in Denver. “Arthur & Hazel Oberfelder: Diversifying the Performing Arts in Denver” features a selection of photographs, autographs, concert programs, show posters and family papers that detail the lives and achievements of the show-business duo who brought touring stage productions to Denver for 30 years, starting in the early 1920s. “A Spotlight on Dance in Denver” spotlights the many acclaimed national and international dance groups that Arthur Oberfelder assembled for performances in Denver in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s.

Another pair of connected AAC exhibits focuses on Jewish life in Colorado: “Blazing the Trail: Colorado Jewish History” traces the central role of Denver’s early Jews in the city’s growth and prosperity; while “From Haven To Home: 350 Years of Jewish Life” examines the Jewish experience in the United States through the prisms of “Haven” — the ideals of freedom that attracted Jewish immigrants — and “Home,” the uniquely American Jewish religious movements, institutions and associations created by diverse groups of Jewish immigrants who settled in the United States.

“Eradicating Hate: A Paper Trail of Nazi Practice,” a special three-day exhibit running Oct. 7–9 in the AAC, features a collection of artifacts related to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, including an envelope Nazis made out of a Jewish Torah scroll and counterfeit money printed in the Warsaw Ghetto. The curator of the collection will be on hand to give 30-minute presentations on the exhibit throughout its run.

DU’s Museum of Anthropology, housed in Sturm Hall, has two exhibits on display this fall. The museum’s current exhibition, running through Sept. 18, is “Connecting the Pieces: Dialogues on the Amache Archaeology Collection,” featuring objects and artifacts from the World War II Japanese-American internment camp in Granada, Colo. Some of the items in the exhibit come from participants in Associate Professor Bonnie Clark’s archaeology field school, a four-week intensive program held every two years at Amache.

Opening Oct. 8 in the museum is “Histories Beyond Homeland,” a contemporary art show by Diné artist Melanie Yazzie that will run in conjunction with the Denver Indigenous Film and Arts Festival.

THEATER

Offerings from the University’s theater department this fall include “Columbinus” (Sept. 25, Byron Theatre), a staged reading of Stephen Karam and PJ Paparelli’s play sparked by the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.; “Bad Jews” (Oct. 15–25, JMAC Studios), a dark comedy about three cousins battling over a family heirloom the night after their grandfather’s funeral; and “Two Rooms” (Nov. 5–15, Byron Theatre), a drama about the imagined conversations between an American teacher held hostage in a dark room and his wife, who is holding a vigil for him in an empty room in their house.

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On Sept. 18, Rebecca Chopp will be inaugurated as the University of Denver’s 18th chancellor. The daylong series of inauguration events culminates with Chopp’s installation ceremony at 2:30 p.m. in Magness Arena, but earlier in the day, a pair of panel discussions will focus on two key issues: the effect of research institutions on the state’s economy; and the importance to Colorado of increasing access to higher education. To help underscore the role higher education plays in the Centennial State, Chopp has invited leaders from colleges and universities around Colorado to take part in the day, along with Denver Mayor Michael Hancock and Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.

For more information on inauguration events, and to register, visit inauguration.du.edu.

The celebration kicks off on Thursday, September 17, with a special lunch for students, hosted by the chancellor. At 4 p.m., the Crimson Classic 5K and 1.5-mile walk — open to University students, faculty, staff and alumni and their families, including children 8 years and older — begins at Sturm Hall, followed by a concert from 6–9 p.m. on the Campus Green.

Friday, inauguration day, begins with a breakfast panel moderated by Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. Chopp and fellow panelists Tim Foster, president of Colorado Mesa University; Stephen Jordan, president of Metropolitan State University of Denver; and Nancy McCallin, president of the Colorado Community College System, will discuss “The Importance to Colorado of Increasing Access to Higher Education.”

A lunch panel, “How Research Institutions Affect Colorado’s Development,” will be moderated by Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, leading discussion among Chopp and fellow panelists Don Elliman, president of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus; Patricia Limerick, faculty director and chair of the board of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado; and Amy Parsons, executive vice chancellor of the Colorado State University System. Registration for both panels is full.

At 1:45 p.m., groups from all over the University will begin the procession across campus to the installation ceremony site, walking from the Mary Reed Building to Magness Arena. Guest speakers at the installation ceremony will be Bruce Benson, president of the University of Colorado, and Jill Tiefenthaler, president of Colorado College. The 2:30 p.m. ceremony will be followed by a community reception on Campus Green.

Rebecca Chopp has been a leader and administrator in higher education for many years. Most recently she was president of Swarthmore College from 2009 to 2014. For more information about her professional and personal background, read her full biography.

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Chancellor Rebecca Chopp will describe a vision for the future of University of Denver during her inaugural address today, as she shares a draft of a strategic plan that the campus community will help to refine over the next two months.

“This draft of our strategic plan outlines a vision of how we can transform the University of Denver and what DU will look like in 10 years. The vision is informed by the imaginative ideas of more than 2,500 faculty, staff, students, alumni, parents and friends,” says Chopp. “With feedback from the campus community this fall, our goal is to have a refined plan to present to the Board of Trustees for approval in January 2016.”

For more information on today’s ceremony and other events, visit the inauguration website.

Imagine DU, as the planning process is called, began in December 2014 as a broad, consultative effort driven by three working groups of faculty, students and staff. These groups consulted with community members across campus and throughout the Denver region, as well as alumni and friends around the country. Working groups also made site visits to other universities, interviewed experts across the country and provided research on three areas of focus — “The Shape of Knowledge,” “The Student Experience” and “Denver and Beyond.”

Members of these three working groups convened as a full advisory group in June to make recommendations based on their interviews, site visits, research and expertise. A subset of that group then created the draft document that will be shared today.

“I couldn’t be more pleased with the thoughtful recommendations that contributed to this vision,” Chopp says. “An effort of this magnitude takes a lot of cooperation and depends on input from everyone in our community.”

Chopp will share a broad vision in her inaugural address, and the draft plan will then be posted on the Imagine DU website late Friday afternoon, with an email to the campus community to follow on Monday.

The campus community will provide feedback through an extensive series of meetings with faculty, staff and students across campus, in addition to two town hall meetings and an online discussion forum. Implementation will begin once the plan is approved.

“As we envision our future, we will build upon our strengths: a strong liberal arts undergraduate program; well-respected professional and graduate programs; renowned faculty who are as committed to their scholarship as they are to transformative teaching; and a deep commitment to the public good,” Chopp says. “We must maintain DU’s path-breaking spirit, drawing upon our strengths and creating a model for a 21st-century global university. Continued input from our community is absolutely critical to realizing a shared vision of our future.”

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The Aurora theater shooting trial that wrapped up last month in Denver brought a myriad of questions, from media outlets around the globe, about mental illness and the insanity defense. One of the most-cited experts in the case was Neil Gowensmith, a clinical assistant professor in DU’s Graduate School of Professional Psychology (GSPP) and director of the DU-based Denver Forensic Institute for Research, Service and Training (Denver FIRST).

“What a moment in time it was if you have a master’s program in forensic psychology and the eyes of the country are focused on Denver,” he says. “As tragic as it was, it was pretty unique. You read the papers every day and you bring it to class and say, ‘Here’s what they’re talking about and here’s what it means and here’s the different directions it could go.’ But because the eyes of the country are focused on Denver, we also have a real obligation to try to set the record straight about the insanity defense, about mental illness, about people with mental illness.”

Visit the Alumni Relations website to register for Pioneer Symposium.

Gowensmith will do just that as one of more than 20 faculty members who will lead sessions during Pioneer Symposium (Sept. 25–26), an event designed to introduce alumni and others to the variety of research and thinking happening on campus. His presentation, “Mental Illness and the Courts: Myths, Challenges, and … Hope?,” will use the theater shooting trial as a jumping-off point for exploring issues around forensic psychology — the intersection of psychology and the legal system.

“[The theater shooting] was a terrible tragedy, and I do believe that James Holmes experienced a significant amount of mental illness, but people shouldn’t equate mental illness with dangerousness,” says Gowensmith, referring to the defendant in the case, who was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. “They shouldn’t assume that this is what people with mental illness are going to do, because it was totally out of the norm. Most people with mental illness are not violent. They are law-abiding citizens, and they never do anything that’s approaching anything like that. We want to use this time to correct that potential stigma or misinformation.”

The stigma around mental illness is one of many issues Gowensmith tackles in the classroom, preparing GSPP students for work in the courts, probation offices, jails, prisons, treatment agencies and other facilities. Denver FIRST, which he founded last summer, is his bid to make DU the go-to spot in the West for research, outreach, training and expertise around forensic mental health.

“The idea is to put all of the forensic expertise that we have in [the Graduate School of Professional Psychology] building under one umbrella, so that it’s easier to market, easier to make more visible,” he says. “There’s no such institute in the West, and there really should be. The University of Denver should be the go-to place when people have forensic mental health questions or needs.”

The center’s reputation has begun to spread, he says. There is an uptick in the number of attorneys and judges reaching out to the DU institute to perform mental health evaluations, and a recent Denver FIRST report on the overall quality of court-ordered evaluations across the country has multiple states reconsidering their procedures — and perhaps eventually contacting DU for help.

“When a person like James Holmes is pleading insanity, then, as you saw here, lots of experts come in with their evaluations and their reports, and they all see the person and they write down what they think is going to happen and they submit that to the court,” Gowensmith says. “And it’s assumed that those reports are of good quality and that the opinions are valid. Even though lawyers are going to argue against them and try to pick them apart, they’re scientifically admissible.

“We’ve done a fair amount of research on real exams that are submitted to the court on real cases, and found that the quality is more mediocre than we’d like to admit,” he continues. “The quality, the consistency, our ability to really use those in an effective way is not as good as what we want.”

The solution, Gowensmith says, lies in better training, better certification and more standardized criteria. The importance of improving the process, he says, can’t be underemphasized.

“Our field, as much as we have to offer, I think we need to hold ourselves close to the fire to make sure that we’re doing the best job that we can, because these are people’s lives at stake,” he says. “I think DU is on the forefront. We have good research and good students who are getting trained; we’re at the forefront of that kind of research agenda; and we’re constantly consulting with other places to get them on board. The idea is that a place like Wisconsin would say, ‘We need to do a better job with our evaluators. We need to have improved standards and improved quality. Let’s call the University of Denver, because they know how to make it happen.’”

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“It was about getting to the root of, ‘How do you make a positive impact? What are the issues in the community?’ It’s a work in progress, because communities are always changing,” Olga Garcia says of her work at Coors Brewing Co. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

Olga Garcia has found a second home at Museo de las Americas, the Denver-based museum and community center dedicated to Latino art and culture. Sitting in the museum’s gallery, surrounded by the colorful, geometrically precise paintings of Mexican artist Gunther Gerzso, she talks about the importance of the museum to her personally — she is a longtime board member who met her husband at the Museo — and to Denver’s young Latino community.

“It’s much more than a museum; the backbone of this organization really is education,” says Garcia, who was involved in the institution’s founding in 1991. “[The staff creates] curriculum and works with Denver Public Schools, they have a team of teachers who go out to communities in our six-county area, and there are school tours that come in. We have a three-week summer camp program, and it’s more than just learning about art. It’s more about career aspirations — what does it take to run a business like this? There’s a business behind everything. We need accountants, we need lawyers; we need everybody to come together and do what they love.”

Connecting with diverse communities is nothing new to Garcia — she has made a career out of it. She worked for 25 years at Coors Brewing Co. in Golden, Colo., serving from 2006–10 as manager of diversity and inclusion in the company’s human resources department. A master’s degree in applied communications from DU’s University College helped her hone her skills.

“We worked with the Latino, African-American and LGBT communities, women’s organizations — we had specific programming that resonated with those communities, and I think that helped us build a strong foundation to go forward with,” says Garcia, pointing to the National Hispana Leadership Institute and other organizations for which Coors was a founding corporate sponsor. “It was about getting to the root of, ‘How do you make a positive impact? What are the issues in the community?’ It’s a work in progress, because communities are always changing.”

For her work at Museo, Denver Health and elsewhere, Garcia was honored in May by Denver’s Latina First Foundation, which named her one of four “Unsung Heroines” in the local Latino community.

“I was very honored to be in the company of such great leaders,” she says. “I think it’s an opportunity for the foundation to highlight what Latina leaders are doing in our community, and that no matter the area, we’re contributing and making a difference in a way that can be appreciated. It’s good to spotlight what has been done and what still needs to be done.”

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For 10 weeks this spring, the head PR office for local nonprofit Slow Food Denver (SFD) was located in a classroom in DU’s Media, Film and Journalism Studies Building.

As part of a spring quarter seminar, undergraduate and graduate students in the strategic communications program partnered with the nonprofit organization, which focuses on linking communities with food sources and on creating a more just and sustainable food system throughout the region. (SFD is the Denver chapter of the Italy-based global organization Slow Food International.)

Working in two separate teams, seminar students acted as SFD’s public relations agency, choosing key audiences to target to raise awareness and strategizing on how to increase membership. They also helped create an ambassador program, slated to debut this summer. The program will send people committed to the slow-food lifestyle into various Denver communities to promote the organization and its work. Students met with SFD’s staff and board of directors May 28 to present their final plans.

“It feels very real-world; it’s very applicable to what a PR agency actually does — working with clients and making sure we are integrating the feedback that they give us and what their wants and needs are, and making sure that we’re very cognizant of those, instead of it being a theoretical plan with an unlimited budget and unlimited time and a staff of 20 to implement it,” says Carley St. Clair, a first-year strategic communications graduate student. “This is a very real organization with very real limitations that we have to bear in mind.”

The project took students off campus and into the city: The SFD office is in the Source, a converted brick foundry in north Denver that houses a collective of restaurants, retailers and artisan food shops. And as a networking exercise, the class attended a barbecue at the home of an SFD member, who treated the students to locally sourced pizza made in a backyard pizza oven.

“That’s something else that’s really cool: We’re part of the community now,” St. Clair says. “We’re not just DU students, but we’re residents of Denver who are able to go out and work in the place where we live. It’s fun.”

Erika Polson, the assistant professor who leads the seminar, says she was guided in part by her students’ interest in food issues when picking a nonprofit for the class to work with.

“We’re interested in fulfilling DU’s vision of being a private university dedicated to the public good, so my first thought is ‘How can we use our class and what our students are learning to help an organization with their own communication needs?’” she says.

“My goal as the professor is to strategically choose an organization that has a mission that I think is going to teach something really great to our students as well. [The students are] all learning about sustainable food and food cultures and food traditions and building communities around food as a part of this class. I really like that part. I don’t pick just any nonprofit; I think about the students’ futures as community members and understanding what it’s like to be part of a really local and yet global organization,” she adds.

Polson also thinks about her students’ professional lives after DU, and how to expose them to the different arenas in which their strategic communications degrees will prove useful.

“Strategic communication is a skill that can be applied in so many ways,” Polson says. “Everyone’s aware of the ways you can apply it in a corporate environment, but I don’t think the students are aware of all the opportunities in a more community-oriented, nonprofit-oriented, activist-oriented way that they can actually have really meaningful careers.”

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Suisheng Zhao recently was named one of the world’s most influential scholars on China’s international affairs, according to research by Shanghai International Studies University.

Chinese President Xi Jinping began his recent visit to the United States with a stop in Seattle, where a Sept. 22 dinner in his honor drew more than 700 businesspeople and dignitaries from China and the U.S. Among those in attendance was Suisheng Zhao, director of the Center for China-U.S. Cooperation at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

“[Xi] started in Seattle because Seattle is a Pacific Rim city facing the Pacific, and there are so many companies doing business with China — like Microsoft, like Boeing,” Zhao says. “He sees that type of city as very friendly to China. These are the people he sees as those who will support a good relationship between China and the U.S., especially in business and technology.”

Zhao recently was named one of the world’s most influential scholars on China’s international affairs, according to research by Shanghai International Studies University. He was tied for sixth place based on number of citations in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) database for the five-year period ending in 2013. The SSCI, produced by Thomson Reuters, tracks citations from nearly 2,500 journals of social sciences across more than 50 disciplines. Zhao also is editor of the center’s Journal of Contemporary China, the world’s top-ranked China study journal.

“This visit, at this time, is a very critical moment for the U.S. to rethink how China is rising,” Zhao says of Xi’s conversations with President Obama during his time in Washington last week. “It’s a very important time for the leaders of these two countries to talk about long-term strategic issues and also some very urgent issues, like cybersecurity. I think that’s what this visit is about.”

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Daniels College of Business alumni Ben Deda and Erik Mitisek (front row: second and third from left) celebrate with Gov. John Hickenlooper the fact that Denver Startup Week attracted more than 10,000 registrants this year.

The 2015 Denver Startup Week (DSW), the nation’s largest gathering of business and tech entrepreneurs, featured a stronghold of successful alumni from the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. The event ran from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2 in various venues downtown and in Denver’s RiNo district.

Erik Mitisek (BS ’99), CEO of Colorado Technology Association, and Ben Deda (MBA ’11), EVP of marketing and business development at Galvanize, are co-founders of DSW, a thriving Front Range phenomenon that reeled in more than 12,000 participants in its fourth year.

For more than a decade, Mitisek has been instrumental in growing the Colorado startup community, helping to create Startup Colorado, Denver Startup Week and BuiltIn Denver. At Galvanize, Deda ensures that underrepresented students and entrepreneurs thrive in the tech industry nationwide, through community-focused venture capital investments.

“Denver Startup Week is about the spirit of innovation and collaboration with our community to elevate startups in Denver,” Mitisek says. “DU’s commitment to fostering this creativity and innovation, across academic disciplines, has never been more important. DU has always been entrepreneurial, which is certainly embodied in the spirit of Daniels College of Business.”

During DSW, the ever-popular “Startup Crawl” featured three hot companies founded by DU alumni. Bart Lorang (MBA ’10), CEO of FullContact; Joey Alfano (MBA ’12) and Samantha Holloway (MBA ’12), co-founders of GoSpotCheck; and Wayne Guerra (MBA ’07), co-founder of iTriage, all showcased their entrepreneurial acumen on the 2.5-mile tour that flowed north from downtown — allowing “crawlers” to peer behind the curtain of Denver’s homegrown tech culture.

Additionally, seven years after meeting her husband, Alex Hasulak (BS ’08), at DU and co-founding local granola empire Love Grown Foods, Maddy D’Amato (BA ’08) became one of the first fully-booked “mentors” for the entirety of DSW, counseling “mentees” on the ins and outs of running a successful startup in Colorado.

“In the halls of Daniels [College of Business], the term entrepreneur and innovator should be synonymous,” Mitisek says. “They should be attached to every degree — it’s a state of mind that Daniels and the University of Denver naturally breed.”

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As in previous years, the 2015 Homecoming and Family Weekend offers activities for the whole family. Photo: Wayne Armstrong

Alumni and faculty writers — including historical novelist Sandra Dallas and Kristen Iversen, author of the Colorado Book Award-winning “Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats” — will take part in “Book Chat at the Book Stack,” one of several new additions to this year’s Homecoming and Family Weekend.

“We want to make homecoming a must-attend event for alumni, friends, parents, students and people in the Denver community by providing access to all the incredible things that happen on campus that people might not know about,” says Franny Starkey, director of events and programs for the Office of Alumni Relations. “One example is the Book Stack, a 40,0000-volume discounted bookstore in Mary Reed. We are highlighting that by bringing in five authors who have DU connections. They will be reading from and signing their latest work.”

Running Oct. 16–17 on campus, the 2015 Homecoming and Family Weekend also includes volleyball, hockey and soccer games, an all-alumni barbecue, student-led campus art tours and a presentation from Chancellor Rebecca Chopp on the future of the University.

“Homecoming is the best time to come back to campus and explore the University at every level, whether it’s reconnecting with friends at the All-Alumni Barbecue, rediscovering your favorite place to eat lunch at Taste of DU or showing off this beautiful campus to your family,” Starkey says. “It’s a chance to rediscover college life and feel proud about where DU is and where it’s going.”

The biggest change this year, Starkey says, is that two of the most popular Homecoming events are being combined into one big outdoor party featuring family activities and samples of food from neighborhood restaurants.

“Pioneer Fest — this year called Pio-Palooza — and Taste of DU are traditionally our two most popular events,” Starkey says. “Taste of DU always sells out, so by bringing the two together on Driscoll Green, we are giving everyone the chance to enjoy what’s great about Taste while having plenty of activities to keep the whole family entertained.”

Highlights of the weekend are listed below; visit the alumni website for a full schedule of events and to register.

Book Chat at the Book Stack — weekend-long series of author events on Carnegie Green, featuring Helen Thorpe, author of “Soldier Girls” (11 a.m. Oct. 16); poet and faculty member Bin Ramke (1 p.m. Oct. 16); faculty member Clark Davis, author of “It Starts With Trouble: William Goyen and the Life of Writing” (2:30 p.m. Oct. 16); alumna Sandra Dallas (BA ’60), author of “The Last Midwife” (noon Oct. 17); and alumna Kristen Iversen (MA ’91, PhD ’96), author of “Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats” (1:30 p.m. Oct. 17).

Gymnastics Open House — 3–5 p.m. Oct. 16, Gates Field House, Ritchie Center. Meet the Denver gymnastics team and enjoy exhibitions, a question and answer session and more.

All-Alumni Barbecue — 5–7:30 p.m. Oct. 16, Driscoll Green. Western-themed event featuring food, games and live music.

Volleyball vs. Oral Roberts — 7 p.m. Oct. 16, Hamilton Gymnasium, Ritchie Center.

Hockey vs. Michigan State — 7:30 p.m. Oct. 16 and 7 p.m. Oct. 17, Magness Arena, Ritchie Center.

Chopp Talk — 8–10 a.m. Oct. 17, Cable Center. The Chancellor brings her Chopp Talk Tour to campus, where she will talk about her vision for the University and listen to audience feedback during an extended Q&A session.

Women’s Swimming and Diving vs. Omaha — noon Oct. 17, El Pomar Natatorium, Ritchie Center.

Pio-Palooza and Taste of DU — 2:30–6:30 p.m. Oct. 17, Driscoll Green. Outdoor carnival with games, live entertainment and family activities, followed by sampling of food from local restaurants.

Men’s Soccer vs. University of Nebraska-Omaha — 7 p.m. Oct. 17, Pioneer Stadium, Ritchie Center.

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Nicole and Scott Mattson opened Nocturne in March 2014. Photo courtesy of Lori J Photography

Just blocks away from the neighborhood where Denver jazz clubs like the Rossonian and Casino Dance Hall once entertained fans back in the 1930s, Daniels College of Business alumna Nicole Mattson and her husband have created a new jazz nightspot that is earning rave reviews from fans and musicians alike.

Nocturne, open since March in the River North neighborhood near Coors Field, was a dream that took many years to come to fruition, Mattson says. She first had the idea when she was a DU undergraduate studying hospitality at Daniels. She would spend evenings watching her boyfriend (now husband), jazz drummer Scott Mattson, perform at various clubs around Denver.

“I would follow him around to his gigs — he played some pretty interesting places around town, some of which no longer exist,” Nicole remembers. “I would sit there and think, from a hospitality perspective, ‘What could make this better?’”

Steve Wiest, co-chair of the jazz studies program at the Lamont School of Music, performs at Nocturne with his quartet every Friday in October, paying tribute to trombone legend J.J. Johnson. Visit the club’s website for tickets and more information.

The two eventually married and moved out of state, but the idea of opening a jazz club in Denver always stayed in the back of their minds. There came a point, Mattson says, where the time felt right, so the couple moved back to town and Mattson came back to DU, this time in the Professional MBA program at Daniels.

“I went in with the mission of, ‘Is this a feasible business to even go into?’ I literally went there to see if this would fly, and I used it as my business plan for several classes and bounced it off all my colleagues in the cohort,” Mattson says. “They’ve been hearing about it for years.”

Two years later, convinced they had all the angles covered, the Mattsons signed a lease on a former garden supply warehouse near 27th and Larimer streets and began converting the space into the funky supper club of their dreams—a place where jazz wasn’t stuffy or pretentious, but the soundtrack to a good time.

“We wanted people to be able to come in and have this jubilant environment of being able to talk to your date or your friends, of having really great food, a really great drink, then also have really great music going on,” she says. “Millennials, the younger generation, they needed an opportunity to come into a place where it’s not as pretentious and it’s not as scary. Jazz is the music originally of brothels and bars, so why not come in and have fun?”

Host primarily to local musicians — often in weekly residency concerts that allow an artist multiple shows to explore a certain composer or subgenre — the club quickly became a favorite among Denver jazzers like Mark Diamond, a journeyman bass player who has performed at Nocturne as part of three different ensembles.

“It’s just a great concept,” says Diamond, who played a 12-week residency during Nocturne’s first three months with his Big Swing Trio. “They ask you pick a theme or an area of jazz to dig into, so we chose the hard bop era, which has so much great music. We took advantage of that weekly opportunity to really learn some new stuff. We probably added 40 or 50 songs during our run.

“It’s unbelievably fantastic to have another real jazz club in town,” Diamond adds. “The whole setting is great. Scott and Nicole are amazing people who have put their life and sweat and blood and tears into making this happen, and it’s a wonderful thing that they’ve done.”

The club also is garnering acclaim for its unique food menu, which changes seasonally and takes inspiration from classic jazz albums. The fall 2015 menu, chef Greg Weadick’s culinary interpretation of saxophonist Sonny Rollins’ 1957 album “Way Out West,” features song-inspired dishes such as “Wagon Wheel” — a pan-fried stuffed trout with squash, beets and cranberries — and “I’m An Old Cowhand,” pork belly with ancho chiles, rattlesnake beans and a prickly pear glaze.

“The food is inspired by a lot of Western ingredients that align with the Western theme of the album,” Mattson says. “You take the concept of what is being played in the music and then figure out how the food works into that.”

The Mattsons also put a priority on staying connected to the Denver community, hosting concerts and other events in partnership with nonprofits such as KUVO, a public jazz radio station, and Youth on Record, which uses music to empower and educate underprivileged Denver kids.

“For us, it’s why we got into business in the first place,” Nicole says. “If you’re not going to be an active member of the community, then why open up a business?

“In jazz, you have to have a sense of community on stage just to be able to improvise with one another, and it’s the same with anything you do in life,” she continues. “You have to be able to listen to the partner who is across the table from you and figure out, ‘What is their next move, and how can I help support that so that we can make great music together?’ In the business world, it’s the same thing. ‘How do we make business together? Well, you’re going to have to listen to me, and I’m going to have to listen to you.’ It’s give and take; we have to figure that all out.”

All are lessons, Mattson says, that she learned at DU, either as an undergraduate hospitality student or as a student in the Professional MBA program at Daniels.

“I think it helped a lot, from the instructors to the cohort I was in [in the MBA program] to just the general community,” Mattson says. “Some of our investors came from networking events at DU. It was a million different connections that got us to the point where we needed to be.”

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