'Your love will be your legacy'

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

'Your love will be your legacy' Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/23/2025 - 07:30

Sarah Kuta

Losing her father to pancreatic cancer inspired CU 51��ý undergraduate Giovanna Ruffolo to raise money for cancer research and pursue a career in medicine

Giovanna Ruffolo was a senior in high school when her dad died of pancreatic cancer.

While other students were looking forward to prom and graduation, Ruffolo was navigating a web of tangled emotions—shock, disbelief, sadness, anger, uncertainty.

“Losing a parent is probably the most intense pain someone can feel in their entire life,” she says. “It’s a terrible, terrible pain.”

Giovanna Ruffolo (second from right) with her brothers Leo (left, a 2024 CU 51��ý graduate) and Joey (second from left, a CU Denver student) and their mom, Rosanna. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

Mostly, though, she just felt numb. Heading off to college so soon after her father’s death was the last thing she wanted to do. But she knew education was important to her dad, so she pushed through the pain and enrolled at CU 51��ý.

Now a senior studying integrative physiology and psychology, Ruffolo is preparing for a career in medicine so that, someday, she can help support families just like hers. She hopes to work in pediatric oncology, providing compassionate care to children who are fighting cancer.

As a Buff, Ruffolo is also honoring her father’s legacy by raising money and awareness for cancer prevention research, an initiative she started just after her father got his diagnosis.

“I just want people to know they have a support system and a network that hates cancer as much as they do—that they’re not alone,” she says.

Helping others

Life was rolling along for the Ruffolo family when they got the news that would change their lives forever. In 2017, their beloved patriarch, John Ruffolo, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, a disease that is often fatal.

“It hit us like a bus,” says Ruffolo.

Pancreatic cancer is the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health. Between 2015 and 2021, the five-year survival rate was just 13.3 percent—much lower than other types of cancer. In 2025, the American Cancer Society estimates 67,440 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and 51,980 people will die from the disease.

“It’s the cancer that really gives cancer its bad name,” Ruffolo says.

Prospect Ridge Academy High School Students participate in a cancer fundraiser organized by Giovanna Ruffolo in 2019. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

Ruffolo was just 14 at the time, but she felt compelled to take action. As a sophomore at Prospect Ridge Academy High School, she created TeamRuffolo, a student-led initiative to raise money and awareness for cancer research.

In November 2018, her school hosted a “Purple Out”—a one-day event in which students were encouraged to wear purple to show their support for the cancer community and donate whatever they could toward prevention research. Students, teachers and administrators raised more than $1,000 for the American Cancer Society that day, and Ruffolo went home feeling inspired and hopeful.

She organized similar fundraisers at her high school in 2019 and 2020 (though the initiative had to go virtual because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

“It was such a wonderful feeling,” she says. “A lot of these people didn’t even know my dad, but they were still so supportive. Seeing people come together not only for him, but just to say, ‘You’re not alone,’ was tremendous for all of us.”

Balancing act

Meanwhile, despite undergoing various treatments and surgeries, her father’s cancer continued to progress. Four years after his diagnosis, he succumbed to the disease in January 2021 at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center.

Ruffolo was utterly devastated, but she knew she had to finish high school and get a college degree for her dad. And, wherever she ended up next, she wanted to continue her awareness-raising and fundraising events to support other cancer patients and their families.

CU 51��ý participants run in the Stronger Together Annual 5K at CU in 2024, the event's most successful year. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

At CU 51��ý, Ruffolo has thrown herself into her studies, with an ultimate goal of working in the medical field. From her father’s experience, Ruffolo learned first-hand that cancer affects more than just the body—it also influences a patient’s mind, spirit and emotions. With that in mind, she’s majoring in integrative physiology and psychology to create her own pre-health pathway.

“My father had trouble grasping being diagnosed with a terminal disease, as anyone rightfully would,” she says. “I want to understand people’s behaviors and thoughts better, so that when someone is going through a hardship, I can better support them.”

To further build her skill set, Ruffolo also completed CU’s emergency medical technician (EMT) program, an online, non-credit specialization that prepares students for national registry testing. She has also worked as a research assistant at CU 51��ý and Children's Hospital Colorado.

In addition, Ruffolo has taken on a leadership role with the CU 51��ý chapter of the American Medical Student Association, spending three years on the executive board before being elected president for the 2025-26 school year. Through the student group, Ruffolo has carried on her TeamRuffolo efforts—now called Stronger Together—by organizing 5-kilometer run/walk events to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

She is also a journey leader with New Student & Family Programs, where she helps incoming freshmen navigate the CU 51��ý experience. Balancing her studies with her extracurricular activities—while also supporting her family and honoring her father’s legacy—has been challenging. But, for Ruffolo, it all comes back to staying true to herself.

“Pretty much my tippy-top value is helping others,” she says.

In class, Ruffolo has never been afraid to ask questions and speak up—even when that means talking about her father’s death in a large lecture hall full of hundreds of students. Jennifer Stratford, a CU 51��ý teaching associate professor of psychology and neuroscience, says Ruffolo’s willingness to be vulnerable has opened the door for other students to share their experiences.

John Ruffolo died from pancreatic cancer in 2021. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

“She just kind of became an ambassador and a face for students who have lost parents,” says Stratford. “I’ve had a lot of feedback from students about how much they appreciated her bravery and how much they identified with some of the struggles she’d been through. It’s a once-in-a-decade or once-in-a-lifetime experience to see a single student have an impact on so many of her classmates.”

‘Your love will be your legacy’

Since high school, Ruffolo estimates she’s helped raise more than $20,000 for the American Cancer Society. And she’s not done yet. She hopes the CU 51��ý AMSA chapter will continue organizing the 5K run/walk fundraisers, and that she’ll be able to host similar events during the next phase of her educational journey.

For now, Ruffolo is focused on finishing up her studies so she can graduate in the spring of 2026. From there, she hopes to continue her education in the medical field, likely as a doctor or physician assistant specializing in pediatric oncology.

“I really want to serve that specific community,” she says. “You’re treating little people who have lots of emotions and a little body. They get very scared easily. You really have to be empathetic and treat them and their families with kindness. I love the idea of sitting down with people, holding their hands, talking to them—not just giving them a death sentence, walking out the door and saying, ‘Best of luck.’”

That approach stems directly from her father’s experiences. As he neared the end of his life, Ruffolo remembers him breaking down and talking about how scared he was. She hopes to be the kind of practitioner who will help people like her dad move forward through their pain and fear, while also treating their underlying illness.

“Your love will be your legacy,” she says. “In a world where there’s no cure for cancer, investing your time in others is the only way you can live forever. And loving other people—giving them kindness and empathy—is one of the best ways to help fight any disease.”

Losing her father to pancreatic cancer inspired CU 51��ý undergraduate Giovanna Ruffolo to raise money for cancer research and pursue a career in medicine.

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Top image: Giovanna Ruffolo (right) and her late father, John, representing Colorado cancer patients and survivors at Mile High Stadium at an event sponsored by the American Cancer Society in 2019. (Photo: Giovanna Ruffolo)

What’s more hardcore than history?

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 22:24:13 +0000

What’s more hardcore than history? Rachel Sauer Wed, 06/18/2025 - 16:24

CU 51��ý alumnus Dan Carlin brings a love of history and a punk sensibility to a new season of The Ampersand as he discusses his hit podcast, Hardcore History

Listen to The Ampersand

There are a lot of places to experience punk: in the dim, smoky basement of Club 88 in Los Angeles in 1983, listening to a then-little-known band called NOFX, but also on the ancient battlefields of Britannia, where Briton warriors drew their swords against the invading Romans.

In the first scenario, Dan Carlin was actually there wearing his signature black T-shirt and Orioles cap. The battlefield? He visits it in his vivid imagination (still in a black T-shirt and ball cap)—drinking in the details and drawing a sensory-rich narrative from historical texts and records.

CU 51��ý history graduate Dan Carlin brings a punk sensibility to his wildly popular podcast, Hardcore History.

Carlin, a University of Colorado 51��ý history graduate, is something of a journalist of the past—a punk rock kid who became a punk rock adult who brings that counterculture ethos to Hardcore History, among the most popular podcasts in the United States with millions of downloads per episode.

He recently joined host Erika Randall, CU 51��ý interim dean of undergraduate education and professor of dance, to kick off a new season of "The Ampersand,” the College of Arts and Sciences podcast. Randall joins guests in exploring stories about “ANDing” as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

Their conversation covered everything from creativity to punk rock to a dog named Mrs. Brown.

DAN CARLIN: So, what makes the past interesting is not so much that it's just, oh, here's a wild story from the past. It's that even though—what did Shakespeare say? Right, "All the world's a stage, and all the people merely players"—the people in the story are people just like we are.

And so, the ability to touch base with something that is otherwise impossible for us to relate to, right, the past is a foreign country, as the saying goes. They do things differently there. Trying to imagine living in a society where they perform human sacrifice, for example, is not possible for us. But you can start to realize that the people in the story are the same as we were.

And if you took a human infant out of the incubator at your local hospital, put them in a time machine, sent them back in the past to a time where people enjoyed visiting public executions, and that child was raised in that culture, they, too, would enjoy going to public executions. So, genetically speaking, we're the same people. And I think that's the end toward understanding the past. I mean, if people ever end up on Mars someday, we might not be able to imagine what it's like to be on Mars. But we can imagine what it's like to be people, even on Mars.

ERIKA RANDALL: I teach dance history, and it really, to me, is about the people and then the context, right, and the people who are next to the people, and how going to see a World's Fair was akin to having access to the world wide web because you suddenly got to be in a moment in time. In the 1900s, all these people came together, and then the forum changed.

So, to say that with just dates and facts but not to go, “Imagine that in this moment Loie Fuller is there with Marie Curie at the same event, running into each other. And look at what that did to dance. Look how technology and art, creativity and science came together because of that confluence of human people at an event.”

And that helps to get students excited versus, “This is the kind of piece that was made at this time on this date,” but to really get into the storytelling. And then the letters, the archives, the archival material that actually brings those humans to life, I find, oh, I want students to get as excited about that as I do. What do you think we do in this generation of people who are learning with so much information that they maybe don't read the bylines perhaps the way you and I did or dive into the works cited to get into the detail of, like, what can make me feel here?

CARLIN: There's a lot to unpack in that question because I think it touches upon a lot of things that I think about but don't have any answers for. I think this is self-evident and obvious, but we're involved in a mass giant human experiment right now. And anybody who's raising kids, even my kids are late teens, early 20s, so, I mean, but they're not really kids anymore.

Dan Carlin's "The End Is Always Near" explores some of the apocalyptic moments from the past as a way to frame the challenges of the future.

But this is all part of this generation, as I tell my oldest, that cropped up literally right after she was born. I mean, once the iPhone comes around, and we're walking around with—what did Elon Musk say? We're all cyborgs now, right? Once we enter that world, we firmly leave the analog world behind.

And what I mean by that is I try to explain to people that the entire history of humanity up until about the 21st century, maybe the very, very end of the 20th, that's an analog world, right? So, if you grew up, as I did, in a pre-computer world, you lived in the same world that the people in ancient Assyria lived in, right? I mean, they came home when the metaphorical streetlights went on, just like we did, right? No way to call mom, no tracking.

But the point is so, all of a sudden, now we enter into a world where we don't know how this plays out because there hasn't been enough time. What's more, unlike ancient times, where the pace of change was slow, so that even if there was some revolutionary new discovery, right, a brand new plow is invented that's going to change the entire world, you would probably have several hundred years to incorporate that new technology and see what that was going to do to society. Even movable print, which shook up the whole world, is nothing compared to what we have now because what we have now, if you said nothing's really going to change for another 50 years, then we could sit there and try to incorporate what's happened, right?

So, there's the ability to absorb and sort of make it a part of. In other words, society redirects around the inventions so that it then becomes the society plus those inventions. But what I think we're all aware of now is that the pace of change is so quick that by the time we would incorporate, oh, my gosh, what is the world plus Facebook like…

RANDALL: It's already moved on.

CARLIN: We're off of Facebook. Yes! And so, the ability to ever get to the absorption phase is gone. What that does for society is a big unknown.

So, the question is often brought up about things like the ability to think deeply or to contemplate. Or, I mean, do people get bored without their cell phone for two minutes? Does that rob us of the ability that ancient thinkers used to have to just sit out in the open air amongst the trees and think? Or as one person pointed out—and I think there's real benefit to this, too—the counterreaction to boredom, right, what boredom makes us do.

RANDALL: Yes.

CARLIN: To not be bored ends up being…

RANDALL: It sparks creativity. It actually lights us up.

CARLIN: Yes. The games you have to invent as a kid because there is no easy access to something else, right?

RANDALL: Yeah.

CARLIN: I don't know what that means for society. I tell my kids all the time that if you happen to be somebody who bucks that trend, it reminds you of the line, "In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," right? I mean, if you can do math and nobody can do math anymore, that's an advantage, right? So, I always try to turn it into, well, if you're one of the few who reads, that's going to help you.

I think doing the show when you're doing five hours of history podcasting sometimes, and that there's an audience for that, helps you go, oh, well, good. There's still that out there. But when you have more than a billion people as your potential audience, getting a few million here or there that are interested in your little niche thing is not necessarily reflective of broad societal trends.

So, I don't know that our audience is representative, and I'm not sure I can draw many conclusions from that.

RANDALL: But it doesn't make you want to go get those other billion. It makes you—like, you don't want to have to necessarily adapt your path towards those folks who want the quick flip and quick hit.

Dan Carlin has hosted Hardcore History since 2006.

CARLIN: I wouldn't do that. No, I wouldn't do that for several reasons. One, there's people who have that lane—lots of people who have that. It’s an easier lane, to be honest. But also, because it's the same thing with why I'm following the Baltimore Orioles when I live in Los Angeles, and I've never been to Baltimore. I mean, this is—I was a punk rock person. I'm a Generation X person.

There's a whole bunch of things in my biography where you just go, oh, this guy is going to do it differently. My wife would say, you just have to be different, don't you? And, yeah, I think that's what it is. So, I don't want those other people. I kind of take pride that the audience invented a name for themselves. They call themselves the "hardcorps," C-O-R-P-S.

RANDALL: Oh, I love that.

CARLIN: This is how I always was as a kid, too. It's not that I'm different and bad. I'm different, and I'm going to take pride in that. And I want my several million, instead of the billions, because it's us, right? It's our own private "hardcorps" club.

RANDALL: In the basement.

CARLIN: We're doing our own thing. You can go enjoy your 30-second TikTok pieces of entertainment.

RANDALL: I can't imagine you in that ball cap and black T-shirt as a punk rock guy. Like, who were you listening to? Were you pierced? What are we talking about? Did the visual change, or were you a contrarian there, too, when you rolled up with your Orioles cap into the basement with people with mohawks?

CARLIN: Well—and I'm speaking to people who were there now in your audience who remember—punk is a caricature of what it was then. It's hard to describe what it was like in '79 or '80 or '81.

RANDALL: In L.A., right?

CARLIN: Yeah. I mean, listen, I remember John Doe, who was the lead singer of X. He had a great line. He said punk was wearing black jeans and having a normal haircut—what we would call a normal haircut today.

If you had short hair in 1978, people would yell out the car. You know, he said people would yell out the car and yell Devo at you because that was contrary. He said, “All I had was a normal American haircut, but that was a statement in 1978.”

So, we looked more normal. A lot of times, we had a lot of hair colors. But with me, if you saw me at CU, I didn't look… I had long hair at CU.

RANDALL: Were you punk? Were you punk at CU?

CARLIN: I was always punk.

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CU 51��ý alumnus Dan Carlin brings a love of history and a punk sensibility to a new season of The Ampersand as he discusses his hit podcast, Hardcore History.

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An apple a day? It’s the 51��ý way

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 08 May 2025 17:18:27 +0000

An apple a day? It’s the 51��ý way Rachel Sauer Thu, 05/08/2025 - 11:18

Rachel Sauer

Newly planted apple orchard on CU 51��ý campus is a nexus of university and community partnerships and will be a living classroom for students and educators

For now, they are twiggy little things, all spindly adolescent limbs that nevertheless hint at future harvests. Saturday morning, one even wore a scattering of creamy white blossoms—flowers that, in years to come, once roots have gained hold and branches have stretched up and out, will grow into apples.

Is there anything more hopeful than planting a tree? Yes, planting a whole orchard of them.

On Saturday, years of planning, research and partnership-building bore fruit on an L-shaped plot in front of the University of Colorado 51��ý 30th Street greenhouse, where more than two-dozen volunteers planted 30 apple trees in what had previously been a scrubby patch of turf.

Funded by a $90,000 Sustainable CU grant, the apple orchard will not only be a classroom and a living lab, but a nexus for community, a carbon sink and a vibrant example that sustainability can be delicious.

“It’s so exciting to see this happening,” says Amy Dunbar-Wallis, who this semester completed her PhD in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and collaborated with CU 51��ý faculty and students and community partners to bring the idea of the first orchard on CU 51��ý campus to fruition.

“It represents how so many people on campus, so many people in the community, have come together to plant this orchard that will be a place to learn and a place to preserve a really neat part of 51��ý’s history.”

In search of old apple trees

The new apple orchard grew from the 51��ý Apple Tree Project, an initiative that began almost 15 years ago with a simple observation: There seemed to be a lot of old apple trees in 51��ý.

Katharine Suding, a professor of distinction in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, had recently moved to the area, “and I was really surprised to see so many old apple trees everywhere,” she recalled during the 2022 Apple Symposium. “I realized I had no idea about the histories and particularly the history of apples, so looking into it a little more, it was clear there are trees here that are remnants of past histories starting in the turn of (20th) century.

Amy Dunbar-Wallis (left) and Tiffany Willis (right, EBio'22) consult a chart designating where each tree would be planted in the new apple orchard in front of the 30th Street greenhouse Saturday morning. Willis, who lives in 51��ý, took EBIO 1250 online during Covid lockdowns and was a lab assistant for the class in 2021.

“There are apple trees in Colorado and in 51��ý that are remnants from old orchards that still exist. There are also remnants of trees that were planted when people came and built ranches or had farms here, and often they were bringing along apple trees from where they came from, whether it was Germany, whether it was the Midwest, whether it was Scandinavia.”

In fall 2017, the 51��ý Apple Tree Project (BATP) sprouted, combining historical sleuthing with cutting-edge genetic testing and grafting to not only locate and catalog 51��ý’s historic apple trees, but also to revive its legacy of apple growing. In the ongoing project, researchers gather data on the age and health of the trees, as well as the type and flavor of the apples, and the genetic diversity that the trees offer to future populations.

Suding and BATP co-principal investigator Lisa Corwin, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, have worked with undergraduate and graduate students not only to gather data, but also to develop the EBIO 1250 course, during which students conduct research on 51��ý’s apple trees; curricula and materials in partnership with the CU Museum of Natural History; a database and app in collaboration with computer science students; an interactive map of apple trees that have been tagged and studied; and the A Power of Place Learning Experience and Research Network (APPLE R Net), a multi-institution research network directed by Corwin that introduces students to field research by involving them in a project examining apple trees across the Rocky Mountain region.

BATP also is part of the Historic Fruit Tree Working Group, which connects Colorado researchers with other apple-exploring groups and researchers across North America.

Mia Williams (left) waters a newly planted apple tree Saturday morning. Williams, who will graduate this summer, is double majoring in ecology and evolutionary biology and environmental studies.

“This project has grown so much since our initial community engaged Apple Blitz in 2018,” says Dunbar-Wallis. “We've tagged over 1,000 trees and created a database, taught multiple course-based undergraduate research experiences at CU and at colleges across Colorado and northern New Mexico, started a data-collection app and interactive map in collaboration with CU computer science capstone students and installed a demonstration orchard in collaboration with 51��ý Open Space and Mountain Parks.”

The demonstration orchard, planted two years ago, functions as a teaching and research laboratory to explore how biodiversity affects the functioning of apple orchards and their services to human well-being, including efficient water use, pollinator habitat and structural complexity supporting natural pest control.

A part of the narrative

The idea for the 30th Street orchard was revived by a group of six undergraduate and two graduate students almost two years ago, who proposed resubmitting a grant application that hadn’t been accepted in 2019.

“We’re a group who really love what we do and love apple trees and working with the soil,” says Katie Mikell, an ecology and evolutionary biology student who is graduating today and who was a member of the team that crafted and submitted the grant proposal.

“Before, (the orchard plot) was a lawn full of monoculture turf grass, so part of our argument was that if we put in an apple orchard, it would create a carbon sink (a system that absorbs more carbon than it releases), it would save the school money and anyone walking by could pick an apple. Plus, once the trees are producing, we can donate apples to the food pantry. Everyone can benefit from an apple orchard.”

Deidre Jaeger (right, PhDEBio'22) and her sons Sage, 4 (left), and Cedar, 1 (center), plant apple trees at the 30th Street orchard Saturday morning. Jaeger was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and an advisor for the Center for Sustainable Landscapes and Communities and is a researcher with the 51��ý Apple Tree Project.

Students prepared the 30th Street site during fall semester, working with departments and organizations across the university, as well as many community partners. The trees planted Saturday are about three years old and were obtained from Widespread Malus and Benevolence Orchard in 51��ý.

“Our students are at the core of the university, and their passion and ingenuity are critical to our values around infusing sustainability throughout CU 51��ý. This orchard exemplifies that pursuit in so many ways,” says Vice Chancellor for Sustainability Andrew Mayock.

“It is not only helping to protect biodiversity in our community. It will help feed those in need on our campus and create a living-learning laboratory space where sustainability leaders of the future will learn and develop strategies for urban agriculture planning.”

Fifteen varieties of apples are represented in the orchard, including locally grown historic cultivars like Wolf River and Colorado Orange. A beloved apple tree on the Bobolink Trail is even represented in a newly planted graft.

“There’s so much learning that can happen in an orchard,” says Manuela Mejia, an ecology and evolutionary biology PhD student who will conduct her doctoral research, which will include studying insect diversity, at the orchard. “So many facets of science are represented here.”

In addition to trees, the orchard will include an understory of native, drought-tolerant grasses and pollinator-friendly wildflowers, notes Mia Williams, who is majoring in environmental studies and ecology and evolutionary biology and will graduate this summer.

“It’s really exciting that this orchard will become a part of the story of agriculture in this area,” Dunbar-Wallis says. “We’ve tagged more than 1,000 trees (through BATP) and some of them are a hundred years old, so you think about everything they’ve seen and been through, the history that they hold, their stories, and now these trees—which are little now and probably won’t produce fruit for two or three years—are part of that narrative.”

Sophie Small (left) and Amy Dunbar-Wallis (right) fill a wheelbarrow with compost Saturday morning to prepare for planting an apple orchard in front of the 30th Street greenhouse. Small, a freshman who is studying biomedical engineering, learned about the project through the CU Farm and Garden Club.

Sophie Small (left), Isaac Kou (center) and Kyrie MacArthur dig a hole Saturday morning before planting an apple tree in it. Small is studying biomedical engineering, Kou just graduated with a major in computer science and a minor in ecology and evolutionary biology and MacArthur is studying history and education.

Amy Dunbar-Wallis (PhDEBio'25) digs a hole for a young apple tree Saturday morning.

Amy Dunbar Wallis (left, black vest) educates student and community volunteers Saturday morning before they plant 30 apple trees in front of the 30th Street greenhouse.

The apple trees planted in the 30th Street orchard Saturday morning, one of which even bloomed, are three years old and should begin producing fruit in two or three years.

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Newly planted apple orchard on CU 51��ý campus is a nexus of university and community partnerships and will be a living classroom for students and educators.

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