Campus News Briefs – Fall 2016

A Tree Grows In... The Office

No one will need to water this office plant: A team of CU students recently designed and built a work space around a live linden tree in Boulder’s Central Park. 

The modular structure — made of wood and metal and open to the sky — measures 450 square feet and has benches, workstations and a deck. The temporary building is not attached to the tree and will be moved periodically. 

The undertaking, part of the Tree X Office project, which aims to modify the human relationship to nature, gave third-year environmental design students soup-to-nuts design, permitting and construction experience. 

More of the story is available at www.colorado.edu/news.

Heard Around Campus 

Jupiter is the biggest, baddest planet."

— Planetary scientist Fran Bagenal of CU Boulder, anticipating the arrival of NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter in July, a mission she and others at CU aided. 

How Do You Say...?

Name an ancient language, the chances are good that Samuel Boyd can read it: In all, the CU professor knows 23, counting dialects. 

“If someone wants to travel with me to Finland, I’m useless,” Boyd, a scholar of the Bible, told the online Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine. “But if you ever want me to translate ancient Phoenician, I can help.” 

An assistant professor of religious studies, Boyd also has advanced reading knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Babylonian, to mention a few, as well as Classical Ethiopic, also called Ge’ez. 

“I was obsessed with Indiana Jones as a kid, so once I started to learn one ancient language,” he said, “I got hooked.” 

Photo © iStock/inhauscreative