About UHL

Jennifer Reich, PhD, is Director of the University Honors and Leadership Program, a Professor of Sociology, and currently has several lines of research. Over the last decade she has examined how parents come to reject vaccines for their children, in dialog with physicians, complementary healthcare providers, activists, and researchers. Reich has a newly published book, Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines (NYU Press). She is Co-PI on a research study that explores how low income adults with Medicaid make decisions about their medical care and perceive the value of healthcare. This mixed methods study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will explicate why individuals seek primary care in the emergency department rather than in primary care settings and what personal and structural factors shape their strategies for their own care. Reich is also part of a multi-center research team conducting a mixed method study to understand the experiences and challenges facing heart transplant recipients. This study aims to understand how heart transplant recipients experience challenges with post-operative care, including medication adherence and treatment requirements, as well as larger challenges, including costs, limitations in employment, and care-giving relationships. The following are some of Reich's recent publications:

"Of natural bodies and antibodies: Parents' vaccine refusal and the dichotomies of natural and artificial"

"Neoliberal Parenting, Future Sexual Citizens, and Vaccines Against Sexual Risk"​​

"Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines"

Selected Publications

In press Reich, Jennifer. Calling the Shots: Parents, Public Health, and the Politics of Vaccine Choice. New York University Press (May 2016)

2015 "Old methods and new technologies: Social media and shifts in power in qualitative research." Ethnography vol. 16, no 4: 394–415 (online October 2014)

2014. Joffe, Carole and Jennifer Reich (editors) Reproduction and Society: Interdisciplinary Readings NY: Routledge

2014 "Neoliberal Mothering and Vaccine Refusal: Imagined Gated Communities and the Privilege of Choice" Gender & Society vol. 28 no. 5, October 679–704

2010 "Children’s Challenges to Efforts to Save Them: An Ethnographic Examination of Children’s Interactions with Child Protective Social Workers." Symbolic Interaction vol.33, no. 3:412-434.

2008 "Not Ready to Fill His Father’s Shoes: A Masculinist Discourse of Abortion" Men and Masculinities. vol.11, no 1: 3-21.

2005 Fixing Families: Parents, Power, and the Child Welfare System NY: Routledge.

Associate Professor, Health and Behavioral Sciences

Broadly, my research revolves around addressing how networks constrain or promote the diffusion of information and/or diseases through populations. Much of this work has focused on HIV/AIDS in "high risk" populations in the US and Sub-Saharan Africa. Recently, I have spent more time examining the integrative patterns and processes in problem-focused areas of science that draw from many academic disciplines (e.g., HIV/AIDS, demography, the environment). In addition, I have a primary interest in using social network theory to improve strategies used in the design and implementation of primary data collection projects. 

Before coming to UCD, I was an Assistant Professor in the Sociology Department and affiliate of the Center on Health, Risk and Society at American University, and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Arizona State University, where I was affiliated with the Center for Population Dynamics and the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity. Before that, I spent two years funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University.

PhD, Ohio State University (Sociology) - 2007
MA, Ohio State University (Sociology) - 2004
BA, Virginia Tech (Interdisciplinary Studies) - 1998

Assistant Professor, Department of Immunology & Microbiology, University of Colorado Anschutz School of Medicine

Dr. Aimee Pugh-Bernard has a broad background in cellular immunology and molecular biology, with specific expertise in human immunology, having attained her PhD in the developmental regulation of human B cells and the autoimmune disorder Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). As a graduate student in immunology, Aimee studied the developmental regulation of VH4.34-expressing B cells as an experimental system for the study of human B cell tolerance. Her studies revealed that mechanisms of cellular regulation during development are impaired in patients with SLE leading to a breach in self-tolerance. As a post-doctoral fellow at National Jewish Health, her research focused on the phenotypic characterization of anergic human B cells via the analysis of basal calcium levels and the ability to flux calcium after stimulation. As a post-doctoral fellow at the Barbara Davis Center, her work revealed that Nkx2.2 is required in the differentiation of pancreatic beta cells and that insulin- and ghrelin-producing cells may share a common progenitor.

Aimee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Colorado Anschutz medical campus (CU AMC) and is actively involved in the CU School of Medicine (CUSOM) Trek curriculum reform, serving on the advanced sciences committee and as the course director for the CUSOM Year 3 Trek advanced sciences immunology and immunotherapy course. Aimee also teaches immunology within the graduate school, medical school, dental school, and the Child Health Advocate / Physician Assistant (CHA/PA) program on the Anschutz medical campus. Most recently, Aimee has developed and run a COVID-19 clinical disease focused course for second, third and fourth year medical students during the pandemic.

As a faculty mentor, she guides an amazing group of volunteer graduate students from all across campus to run a non-profit, after-school science program – Think Like a Scientist- at elementary schools throughout the Aurora and Denver communities.

In her role as the Assistant Director for the CU School of Medicine Dean’s Office Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Initiative (HI3) Aimee has utilized her experience as an immunologist with expertise in human B cell development and autoimmunity, her skills as an educator and communicator of science, and her organizational and program building skills to coordinate the development of the research and clinical infrastructure necessary to create an all-inclusive, premier facility for the discovery and use of human immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Associate Professor, Visual Arts (CAM)

Maria Elena Buszek, Ph.D. is a scholar, critic, curator, and Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Colorado Denver, where she teaches courses on Modern and contemporary art and design.

Her recent publications include the books "Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture" and "Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art"; contributions to the anthologies "Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower" and "Design History Beyond the Canon"; catalogue essays for numerous international exhibitions; and articles and criticism in such journals as Art in America, Art Journal, Flash Art, and TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies. With Hilary Robinson, she edited the 2019 anthology of new writing, "A Companion to Feminist Art." She has also been a regular contributor to the popular feminist magazine BUST since 1999. Her current book project, "Art of Noise", explores the ties between contemporary feminist art and popular music.

Dr. Buszek is also a prolific independent curator, who has previously worked at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her most recent exhibitions include "Inner Ear Vision: Sound as Medium" (with Raven Chacon and Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, 2019) and "Danger Came Smiling: Feminist Artists and Popular Music" (2016).

Professor, Communication

Dr. Sarah K. Fields (JD Washington University; PhD University of Iowa) is the Faculty Coordinator for the Honors Scholars Program and a professor in Communication. She has previously taught at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Georgia, and Ohio State University. Her research and teaching focuses largely on the intersection of sport and American culture, specifically examining issues of gender, injury, and law. She is the author of Game Faces: Sport Celebrity and the Laws of Reputation (University of Illinois Press, 2016) and Female Gladiators: Gender, Law, and Contact Sport in America (University of Illinois Press, 2005). Dr. Fields is a recreational athlete who also enjoys outdoor activities with her dog and wife as well as watching television with her cats.

Linda Fried, JD, is an instructor in the Department of Information Systems in the University of Colorado Denver School of Business.​

Before joining the University of Colorado Denver, Linda Fried, JD, MBA, was an adjunct at the University of Denver, Keller Graduate School of Business, the University of Phoenix, and Devry College. She practiced law in both Miami, Florida, and in Connecticut, whilst collecting various graduate degrees, including multiple law and business degrees.

She worked as a vice president in charge of real estate acquisitions and licensings for a Fortune 100 corporation. Additionally, she owned several successful businesses ranging from a jewelry store to an import business specializing in indigenous persons’ arts, crafts, and antiquities, which took her to every country in the world. She currently works for numerous organizations as a volunteer, including Denver CERT, the CFA, and the COBG, and donates numerous hours each year doing pro bono legal work.

At the university, she serves on the University Honors and Leadership Steering Committee and the Committee for the Status of Women. In the business world, she currently sits on five boards of directors.

She has written several instructor manuals and additional online materials that accompany two of the most used business law texts for their publishers.

Associate Professor, Sociology

Dr. Guzik's areas of concentration include criminology, law & society, science & technology studies, sociological theory, and qualitative methods. His research examines technology’s role in legal institutions and processes and its impact on people’s legal experiences. His recent work has covered the use of information and surveillance technologies to combat insecurity, especially in the context of Mexico’s War on Crime, the adoption of body-worn cameras by policing agencies in the United States, the relationship between procedural justice and court legitimacy in Poland, and the influence of ethnographic methods on politics and policy. He has also written on intimate partner abuse in the past and the effects of arrest and prosecution on changing abusers’ conduct.

2005 - Ph.D., Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1997 - M.A., Latin American Studies, University of Connecticut
1995 - B.A., History, University of Massachusetts

Traci L. Jones holds a B.A. in psychology from Pomona College in Claremont, Ca. An M.A. in advertising from the University of Denver, and has taken several courses in Creative Writing at the University of Denver. 

Before launching a young adult novelist career, Traci L. Jones wrote articles for the local business magazines, In The Black and Emerging Markets. 

Discovered in the slush pile by Beverly Reingold at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (FSG), Traci L. Jones’ first YA novel, Standing Against the Wind, was published in 2006 and won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award.  Her second novel, Finding My Place also published by FSG in 2010. Her third novel, Silhouetted by the Blue (FSG), was released in July 2011 and received a starred review from Booklist. Her fourth YA novel, Ransoming the Captive, will be published July 2022 by Black Rose Writing. She currently has two manuscripts represented by Metamorphosis Literary Agency and her agent, Amy Brewer.

In 2016, she began working as a creative writing instructor for the MFA program at Regis University.  She joined the instructor staff at Lighthouse Writing Workshop in March of 2020. In 2022 she will teach a course on Young adult literature for the Honors College at the University of Colorado at Denver.

Traci L. Jones is the proud mother of four. She lives with her husband in Denver, Colorado

Lecturer, UHL

Indra Lusero, JD., MA., is the founder of Elephant Circle, a birth justice organization, and the Birth Rights Bar Association, for lawyers and legal advocates working on issues related to birth. Indra helped pass legislation in Colorado to eliminate the shackling of incarcerated women during pregnancy and birth, to improve midwifery and birth center regulations, and to create more humane policies for families impacted by substance use. Indra also spearheaded the creation of "Birth Rights: A resource for everyday people to defend human rights during labor and birth." Risk is a common theme in Indra's work. As a Queer, Genderqueer, Latinx parent rooted in this region, Indra is attuned to the importance of people on the margins and our role in leading the dismantling of oppressive systems to build a more equitable world.

Sean McGowan, PhD, is a guitarist from Maine who combines many diverse influences with unconventional techniques to create a broad palette of textures within his compositions and arrangements for solo guitar. Sean graduated with a DMA in Guitar Performance from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Music Performance at the University of Colorado Denver. He has served as an artist/clinician for the Maine Arts Commission since 2000 and also as guitar faculty for the University of Maine and Bowdoin College.

His first recording, River Coffee, won the Best Independent Release of the Year award (2002) from Acoustic Guitar magazine. Music from the CD has been featured on BBC’s Great Guitars radio program, and has been published in Japan’s Acoustic Guitar magazine and Mel Bay’s Master Anthology of Fingerstyle Guitar, Vol. 3. Sean has collaborated with several dance and improvisation companies including the Portland Ballet, and has performed as an accompanist for several dance festivals including the American College Dance Festival.

Robert Metcalf, PhD, joined the faculty at University of Colorado Denver in 2000, after completing his PhD at the Pennsylvania State University. He teaches courses in Ancient Greek Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy and Literature, and team-teaches a UHL course titled, "Love and Death in the Greek Classics."

He is a translator (with Mark Tanzer) of Martin Heidegger's BASIC CONCEPTS OF ARISTOTELIAN PHILOSOPHY (Indiana University Press, 2009), and has published numerous articles on ancient philosophy and rhetoric, on the philosophy of religion, and on the German philosopher, Martin Heidegger.

Instructor, English

Andrea Modica has an MA in the Teaching of Writing from UCD. She has been teaching for UCD's English department since 2004 and teaching for the UHL department since 2013. Her Core Composition course explores the sins and virtues present in current events and uses the news to illustrate best practices in rhetoric.

Professor, School of Public Affairs

Callie Marie Rennison is a professor and former associate dean of faculty affairs at University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs. She also served as the Director of the Office of Equity and Title IX Coordinator for the CU Denver and Anschutz Medical campuses. She earned her PhD in 1997 in Political Science from the University of Houston, University Park, where she also received a BS in Psychology, MA in Sociology and MA in Political science. In 2016, she was awarded the Bonnie S. Fisher Victimology Career Award from the Division of Victimology in the American Society of Criminology. She has also served on a National Academies Committee examining domestic sex trafficking of minors in the United States and was a senior researcher at the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. 

Her research focuses on the nature, extent and consequences of violent victimization with an emphasis on research methodology; quantitative analysis, measurement, and crime data. Her research has appeared in many venues including the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Violence and Victims, and Violence Against Women. She has authored several books including “Introduction to Criminal Justice: Systems, Diversity and Change” (with Dr. Mary Dodge; Sage Publications), the “Wiley Handbook on the Psychology of Violence” (edited with Dr. Carlos Cuevas), “Research Methods in Criminal Justice and Criminology” (with Dr. Timothy C. Hart; Sage Publications) and the “International Handbook of Violence Studies” (with Drs. Walter DeKeseredy and Amanda Sanchez). Most recently (2019), she published "Women Leading Change in Academia: Breaking the Glass Cliff, Ceiling and Slipper" with co-editor Dr. Amy Bonomi of Michigan State University. 

Dr. Rennison has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses including Research Methods, Statistics, Murder in America, Crime and the Media, and Introduction to Criminal Justice.

Associate Professor, English

Gillian Silverman is Associate Professor of English and affiliate faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Colorado Denver.  She is also a President’s Teaching Scholar.  She teaches courses in American literature and culture, critical theory, and gender studies.  She is currently at work on two book projects—one, a study of reading practices and their relation to the human sensorium; and the second, a book (co-written with Sarah Hagelin) about female antiheros in contemporary US television. 

Dale Stahl is an environmental historian specializing in the history of the modern Middle East. His research and teaching interests center on state formation and governance, environmental resource management, international relations, and economic development. He teaches courses on global environmental history, the political and social history of the Middle East, the history of technology and science, and Islamic history. 

Professor Stahl is currently working on a manuscript based on his dissertation, "The Two Rivers: Water, Development and Politics in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin, 1920-1975," which explores the political and environmental history of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Specifically, the book traces the connections between governance, resource extraction, and state formation in Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

Professor Stahl's research has been supported by the New York University Abu Dhabi Institute, the Institute of Turkish Studies, the Whiting Foundation, and the American Academic Research Institute in Iraq. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2014.

Instructor, English, Gender and Women’s Studies

Jody S. Thomas teaches courses in English, Humanities, Film, and Women’s and Gender Studies at CU Denver, Front Range Community College, and the Community College of Denver. Her academic interests are at the intersections of these subjects; for example, book to film adaptations, and women in the humanities. She serves on the board of Education Nonprofit Corporation, a Golden based nonprofit supporting Jeffco schools.  A Denver native, she has also lived in LA, London, and Florence, Italy, and was educated at Claremont McKenna College, Oxford University, and CU Denver.   

Jody has been teaching UHL students in their first year at CU Denver for over a decade.  Her goal is to help students develop and sharpen their own ideas through precision in writing.   

Elisabeth joined the UHL program in 2015 and has been a part of the Auraria campus since 1991. She received her undergraduate degree in organizational communication and anthropology from Metropolitan State University of Denver and her master's degree in business management and organization from CU Denver. She recruits and advises students within UHL and works to ensure UHL students have the resources necessary for success.

Elisabeth’s favorite thing about UHL is the feeling of community and atmosphere of support within the program. Elisabeth is an adoptive mother, wife, and parent to five rescue pets. When she's not at UHL or chasing her extremely active pets and daughter, you can find her gardening, scuba diving, floral arranging, learning a new craft, or traveling.

Adrian Gomez is a Denver native who is passionate about completing a degree in Biology and enrolling in pharmacy school. Currently, he is a part of the University Honors and Leadership program as a University Honors student and as a student assistant III. 

James Hermance (UHL Class of 2023) is majoring in Architecture. James is involved in the University of Honors and Leadership Program, the American Institute of Architecture Students, and Club Basketball. He loves the CU Denver campus and the vibrancy of Downtown Denver. His favorite part of UHL is meeting people that come to the UHL house and getting to know them better.

Ana Fuentes Romero is a transfer to the University Honors and Leadership Program and is studying Economics. She was born and raised in Colorado and enjoys spending time with other UHL students and her family.

Hello! My name is Luis Vargas and I am currently a Third Year at the University of Colorado Denver with a major in Public Health B.S and minors in History and Leadership studies while also on a pre-med track. I was born in Lima, Peru, but have lived most of my life here in the United States and have done all my education here as well. During my free time, I like to hangout with my friends, spend quality time with my family, and volunteer in my community to make a difference. I love working for UHL because they are one of the most inclusive programs on campus and everyone here is super friendly and does their best to make you feel welcome to this program! If you have any free time, feel free to stop by the UHL house, whether you want someone to chat with or a quiet place to work, we have everything a student needs here so do not be shy!