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The University of Colorado at Boulder's Sommers-Bausch Observatory will host an open house and tour in conjunction with the Historic Boulder organization on Friday, Oct. 20, from 5:30 p.m. to 11 p.m. The free, public events will include a tour of the observatory and demonstrations of the telescopes, dome and other equipment at the observatory. Keith Gleason, the observatory's manager, will give a presentation about the history and preservation of the observatory. The schedule of events includes:

World-renowned CU-Boulder Arctic climatologist Roger Barry will receive the prestigious Goldthwait Polar Medal by the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University on Friday, Oct. 13, in recognition of his lifetime contribution to the field of cryospheric science.

The Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Colorado at Boulder has been awarded a major grant by the National Science Foundation to provide early research experiences for undergraduate students in the department. The Mentoring through Critical Transitions Program, or MCTP, grant will provide $1.3 million over the next five years, supporting approximately 15 to 20 undergraduates with stipends of up to $6,500 per year.

The University of Colorado at Boulder will host a public panel discussion on Monday, Oct. 16, about Amendment 39 and Referendum J, two November ballot initiatives that could change how Colorado funds public schools. Co-sponsored by the Education and Public Interest Center in CU-Boulder's School of Education and the Colorado Children's Campaign, the panel discussion will be held from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the Old Main Chapel on the Boulder campus.

Former NASA astronaut and University of Colorado at Boulder alumnus Scott Carpenter, the second American to orbit Earth, will be on campus Oct. 12 to present a $10,000 astronaut scholarship to a CU-Boulder physics department senior.

Engineering students at the University of Colorado at Boulder are finding more meaningful-and often better paying-part-time jobs in their pursuits of education, thanks to a program that also helps the college stretch its limited budget.

Faculty and students who have spent the last six weeks learning to use the high-tech equipment in CU-Boulder's new ATLAS building will spend a day demonstrating the building's potential this Friday, Oct. 13, including demonstrations in the cutting-edge "black box" multimedia performance space, panel discussions on technology-related topics and more.

Setting foot in a classroom as a new teacher can be overwhelming enough to ground many fledgling teachers before they even take off. But the University of Colorado at Boulder's School of Education is striving to make the process less daunting by pairing newly licensed teachers with experienced teachers from local school districts. And at the same time, the new teachers get a head start on their master's degrees.

The University of Colorado at Boulder received $256.5 million in sponsored research awards for the 2006 fiscal year, nearly two-thirds of it from four of the largest federal agencies.

A region of the human brain that scientists believe is critical to human intellectual abilities surprisingly functions much like a digital computer, according to psychology Professor Randall O'Reilly of the University of Colorado at Boulder. The finding could help researchers better understand the functioning of human intelligence. In a review of biological computer models of the brain appearing in the Oct. 6 edition of the journal Science, O'Reilly contends that the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia operate much like a digital computer system.