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Three science instruments launched Feb. 26 aboard a $5 million satellite designed and built by CU-Â鶹ӰԺ students, faculty and engineers have been turned on and are returning data, said project scientists.

A partnership between three School of Journalism and Mass Communication professors and a Â鶹ӰԺ marketing consulting firm will develop advertising and marketing messages for non-profit organizations. Ads for People will develop strategic marketing plans and create print and broadcast ads. The team of former New York advertising executives has been selected by the National Interfaith Hospitality Network (NIHN) as its first client. NIHN is a network of more than 40,000 volunteers who turn churches and synagogues into shelters for the working poor and their children.

With spring already in the air, Â鶹ӰԺ area youngsters may be anxious to get outside during Spring Break, coming up for most local schools March 23 through March 27. Science Discovery, an outreach program of the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ, may have just the prescription. “Spring Break Adventure,” a daily program for children ages 7 through 9, combines outdoor activities, games and excursions with crafts, experiments and science explorations for a week of integrated learning and adventure.

CU-Â鶹ӰԺ anthropology Professor Dennis Van Gerven, who last fall was named the 1998 Colorado Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, will discuss teaching and learning in a talk to state legislators Monday, March 15, at the Colorado History Museum. The talk will follow consideration of a joint resolution that morning in the Colorado House and Senate honoring Van Gerven's naming as 1998 Professor of the Year. The resolution is being sponsored by Sen. Dorothy Rupert of Â鶹ӰԺ and Rep. Ron Tupa of Â鶹ӰԺ.

The CU-Â鶹ӰԺ Division of Continuing Education and the University Book Store will present two well-known faculty, who are also authors, in a Lunch and Learn Series to be held at the Chautauqua Community House. The lunch-time talks will entertain, provoke and inform, according to Gwen Thornton, academic coordinator for the Division of Continuing Education.

Growing up on the Navajo reservation in northeast Arizona, Rita Cordalis was like most other children there who didn’t grasp the significance of their cultural traditions as they grew up in their midst. Now a student in the University of Colorado’s Museum Studies graduate program, Cordalis has found in the Navajo tradition of basketmaking a language that tells the story of her people. “To me, it’s important to tell the story of the baskets,” Cordalis says. “Even among the Navajo people, it’s not a story that’s told often.”

The University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ released a report today on the outcome of its investigation into the participation of an ineligible football player in the fall 1997 football season. In the report provided to the Big 12 Conference, the university concluded the participation by student-athlete Darren M. Fisk was an inadvertent violation of NCAA Bylaw 14.2.1. Under a fixed penalty clause of the NCAA and the Big 12 conference, the university agreed to forfeit all victories in the fall 1997 season.

The IMAX film crew that documented life and death on Mount Everest relied on the expertise of CU-Â鶹ӰԺ geology Professor Roger Bilhan over an 18-month period to help them get the science right. “Everest,” which premieres March 13 at the IMAX Theater in the Denver Museum of Natural History, was filmed by a crew led by David Breashears of Â鶹ӰԺ.

Daniel Vigil, associate dean of the University of Colorado at Â鶹ӰԺ School of Law, has been elected chairman of the board of directors of the Legal Aid Society of Metropolitan Denver. The non-profit corporation was founded in 1925 to provide free legal representation in civil matters to low-income residents in the Denver metropolitan area. Since the early 1980s, the organization also has served clients in 11 rural mountain counties in northwestern Colorado.

The University of Colorado and Colorado State University have teamed up with two Colorado high schools to create a statewide model for learning Japanese. The Modern Language Association awarded a grant of nearly $6,000 to the universities to work with Eaglecrest High School in Aurora and Â鶹ӰԺ High School over the next two years. It was one of eight such awards made nationally.