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The University of Colorado at Boulder will launch a search immediately for its next vice chancellor for academic affairs, beginning with an internal search as defined by policies of the Board of Regents, according to Chancellor Richard L. Byyny. Wallace Loh, current vice chancellor for academic affairs, recently announced his resignation, effective Sept. 30, to become director of policy for the governor of the state of Washington.

A meeting of remembrance will be held Sept. 6 in honor of Joe Ben Wheat, an internationally known archaeologist and curator emeritus of the University of Colorado Museum. Wheat died June 12 at St. Anthony Hospital Central in Denver after a short illness. He was 81. Friends, colleagues and other members of the university community are invited to meet informally at 10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 6, in the Mary Rippon Theater north of the museum on the CU-Boulder campus. Participants will share reminiscences and later adjourn to the museum for light refreshments.

An exhibit exploring the history of free speech and censorship at the University of Colorado at Boulder opens Friday, Aug. 22, at Norlin Library in conjunction with a year-long initiative on civility and censorship by the campus’s new Center for Humanities and the Arts. The exhibit ties in with the center’s inaugural event for the 1997-98 academic year, a panel presentation on “Civility, Censorship and CU: A Celebration of George Norlin and the Cause of Free Speech.’’

On the first day of her fall semester class on deviance in American society, CU-Boulder Professor Patti Adler plans to wear a swim suit, Hawaiian sarong, beach towel and sunscreen. In previous classes she has worn a man's suit, a cap and gown and flannel pajamas with bunny slippers. It's all done to bring home a point about violating social norms in her popular Deviance in U.S. Society class. While her attire would be perfectly appropriate on the beach, Adler notes, it violates a social norm to wear such clothing while teaching a university class.

Robert Norris Maust has been appointed director of a program sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to reduce the use and abuse of alcohol at the University of Colorado at Boulder, according to Ronald Stump, dean of students at CU-Boulder. The appointment is subject to approval by the Board of Regents. The program, titled “A Matter of Degree,” was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation last year. CU-Boulder’s grant was one of four the foundation funded at campuses across the nation and it was the largest at $860,769.

Recent discoveries of the Mars Pathfinder mission will be the subject of a free public talk by University of Colorado at Boulder planetary scientist Bruce Jakosky on Sept. 3. Jakosky, an associate professor in the geological sciences department and a member of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, will show and discuss visual images and other information sent back by the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft and its surface explorer, the Sojourner Rover.

New auto and foot traffic patterns have been developed temporarily for a central part of the University of Colorado at Boulder to help students, faculty, staff and visitors navigate around a construction project when the fall semester begins this month. Access to parking lots and to residence halls for student move-in will not be affected. Also, there will be no direct impact on scheduled classes, activities or programs.

The University of Colorado at Boulder expects to enroll its second-largest freshman class ever this fall if current projections hold true, with overall campus enrollment expected to fall between 24,500 and 25,000. Fall 1996 enrollment at CU-Boulder was 24,622. The freshman class is expected to number more than 4,100, or nearly 4 percent more than the 3,952 freshmen who enrolled in fall 1996. The largest freshman class was 4,182 in fall 1995.

Residence halls at the University of Colorado at Boulder are at 101 percent capacity as a near record number of freshman students begin arriving on campus for the start of the fall 1997 semester. The campus’s 6,000 dormitory spaces in 21 buildings are full to slightly over capacity, according to Ken Kucera, head of the reservations office in the Housing Department at CU-Boulder. But the crowding should be temporary. “Typically the situation begins to settle out after the first week of classes as the campus experiences some attrition,” Kucera said.

Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder and Geron Corp. have discovered the human gene for the active component of an enzyme known as telomerase that lengthens the ends of chromosomes, a finding that may lead to improved cancer diagnosis and treatment.