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As you hopefully already know if you are a reader of this newsletter, the department organized an Alumni & Friends Celebration on March 23, 2023 at the Sheraton Denver Downtown, coinciding with the annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers which was held in Denver this year. The reception was a blast! There were over 150 people in attendance, including graduate and undergraduate alumni spanning the decades, from the early 1970s to the present, as well as former faculty members, and current faculty and students. We’ve heard from a number of attendees how much they appreciated the opportunity to see so many friends and reconnect with both the department and other alumni. 

In addition to mingling, the event also had several organized components. Four doctoral students, Xiaoling Chen, Diego Melo, Emma Rieves, and Ben Barron gave excellent lightning talks – 3 minute, fast paced and to-the-point overviews of their respective dissertation research projects. Other graduate students and postdoctoral fellows made research posters that were displayed around the room. These were by Sade Cromratie Clemons, Gabriella Subia Smith, Claire Simpson, Zhongying Wang, Behzad Vahedi, Priscilla Corbett, and Rafael Pires de Lima. Part of the evening was dedicated to celebrating the career of Babs Buttenfield, who retired at the end of 2020, but continues to be active in research, and who recently won the 2023 CaGIS . Several of her former and current students and colleagues, including Samantha Arundel, Ming-Hsiang Tsou, Larry Stanislawski, Jeff Hammerlink, André Skupin, Yi Qiang, and Georgios Charisoulis spoke to her achievements and influence on them. Lastly, we had hoped to announce the winners of this year’s graduate awards, but too much fun was being had to quiet down the room sufficiently for this to happen!

To prepare for the event, the department made several posters of our entering graduate cohorts going back to the mid-1990s, which alumni had fun finding themselves on. Because geographers do such interesting fieldwork all over the world, we also printed more than a dozen beautiful and interesting fieldwork photos submitted by faculty and students. These decorated the hotel reception room and will now  brighten the walls of Guggenheim. The graduate students also organized a silent auction of items including cloth topographical maps and books authored by current faculty members. 

We hope this event was just the first of many ways that we develop closer and ongoing relationships with our alumni. If you didn’t RSVP for the event but are willing to, we ask that you update your contact information via the alumni site, or if you’d rather, update here just for the department. Finally, we rely on the generous support of our alumni and friends, please if you are willing and able. 

Selected Photos:

Collage (faux bulletin board) presented to Babs in honor of her retirement: