March 31, 2016
The Office for Outreach and Engagement is pleased to announce that Sabrina Sideris, program director for INVST Community Studies, has been selected as the recipient of the 2016 Anne K. Heinz Staff Award for Excellence in Outreach & Engagement.
In addition, James S. Hakala, senior educator for the CU-Boulder Museum of Natural History, and Nicole Speer, director of operations for Intermountain Neuroimaging Consortium, have been selected for special recognition awards.
The awards were presented at the annual Outreach Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, March 30, and they honor staff members who have demonstrated outstanding professional commitments to and success with community outreach and engagement initiatives, according to David Meens, director for the Office for Outreach and Engagement. In addition to public recognition, Sideris will receive $5,000 to support activities within INVST Community Studies as identified by her, and Hakala and Speer will be awarded $1,000 to be applied toward their outreach programs.
“On behalf of the Chancellor and Provost, we are excited to recognize Sabrina, James and Nicole as well as the other nominees,” said Sara Thompson, dean of the Division of Continuing Education and vice provost for Summer Session and Outreach & Engagement. "This recognition underscores the important role our staff play in advancing outreach and engagement initiatives, which are an integral part of our role and mission as a comprehensive, public research university.”
Sabrina Sideris, 2016 Anne K. Heinz Staff Award for Excellence in Outreach & Engagement
Sabrina Sideris, program director of INVST Community Studies since 2007, sees her professional purpose as helping young adults become conscientious, concerned citizens. Sideris helps build partnerships between CU-Boulder students and local organizations, and supports learners as they work toward social and environmental change through justice and peace work. INVST is part of CU Engage, which supports community-based learning and research.
According to Roudy Hildreth, associate director of CU Engage, Sideris embodies the ideals of democracy, reciprocity and social justice and brings these ideals to her leadership of the INVST program. “Sideris is a different kind of program director – she works democratically with students, instructors and community partners to develop INVST, foster partnerships and work for social justice,” said Hildreth in his nominating letter.
The INVST program was created in 1990 to help develop life-long community leaders who work for the benefit of humanity and the environment. The curriculum includes a two-year leadership program where students study the theory and learn skills around community development, and participate in service-learning experiences domestically and abroad, a community-based internship, and a year-long project focused on social change. INVST also offers electives that foster civic responsibility and leadership.
Thanks to Sideris’ leadership, INVST has cultivated relationships with more than 300 Boulder and Denver agencies that offer community-based learning opportunities to INVST students, including the Community Foundation of Boulder County, the Boulder Housing Coalition, Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence, Intercambio, New Era Colorado and the Philanthropiece Foundation.
Molly Fitzpatrick, the organizing director for New Era Colorado, a local organization that works to engage young people in democracy, said in her letter of support that Sideris shows her dedication to serving others through countless trainings for members “that have made them better organizers and more prepared to engage with the diversity of the millennial generation.”
James S. Hakala, 2016 Special Recognition Award
As a senior educator for the CU-Boulder Museum of Natural History, James Hakala has built an impressive set of educational classroom kits. The portable fossil and archaeology kits provide state standards-based curriculum as well as artifacts and fossils that offer hands-on learning experiences for 4th grade classes across Colorado. Thanks to Hakala’s work, nearly 25,000 4th graders have used the kits in classrooms in Delta, Fort Morgan, Durango, Trinidad, Greeley and other locations. In fact, more than 300 schools in 40 school districts are now using the kits to enhance teaching of this material. Hakala also provides implementation training for teachers.
According to Danae Rosso, a fourth-grade teacher in Gilcrest, CO, seeing and touching real and reproduced artifacts helps her students better understand the content and increases their enthusiasm for learning. “It is exciting to see their minds and attitudes open towards different cultures as they connect to the past. The thought that was put into the lessons and materials of this kit is truly impressive,” Rosso said in her letter of support. “Without support from this program, I would never be able to offer the rich learning experience the archaeology kit provides.”
Nicole Speer, 2016 Special Recognition Award
As the director of operations, Nicole Speer has been vital to outreach efforts for the Intermountain Neuroimaging Consortium (INC), a CU-Boulder brain imaging facility that supports neuroscience research related to addiction, pain, emotion, attention, sleep, learning and memory locally and nationally. Speer develops, manages and implements the INC’s outreach programs, which includes training CU-Boulder undergraduate students to deliver interactive, age-appropriate neuroscience lessons to K-12 students in the Denver/Boulder area. These lessons, which focus on how students can make healthy lifestyle choices related to exercise and sleep, have reached more than 2,000 K-12 students and teachers since 2013.
In her nominating letter, Marie Banich, the director of the Institute of Cognitive Science and the Executive Director of the INC, described the enthusiasm and diligence Speer brings to developing relationships and collaborations with school districts as well as CU-Boulder faculty, staff and undergraduates and to creating community-centered events such as the recent International Brain Awareness Week. Speer has added to “CU’s reputation as a concerned and caring partner that has much to contribute to the local community. It is the passion and love that Nicole has for education and community engagement that comes out in all aspects of her work on this project,” Banich said.
About the Awards
The awards are administered by the Office for Outreach and Engagement and the recipients were selected by a committee that includes Peg Posnick, outreach coordinator for the Department of Theatre and Dance, Armando Pares, assistant dean of Continuing Education, and Cathy Comstock, faculty director for the Farrand Residential Academic Program.
The Anne K. Heinz Staff Award for Excellence in Outreach & Engagement was named for Heinz, who retired as dean of Continuing Education in 2015, in recognition of more than 25 years of support to faculty and staff and her legacy of leadership in outreach and engagement efforts at CU-Boulder.