David Kimmett: Generations of Geography: Reflecting on a Legacy of Learning at CU GEOG
My time wandering the halls and climbing the central staircase of Guggenheim really was a long time ago – Class of 1994?!? Heck, that’s pre-internet! However, it doesn’t feel like a galaxy far, far away…I learned so much about so many things in such a short-but-immensely influential epoch during my years at CU…and indubitably the best knowledge stemmed from The Best Building On Campus, The Simon Guggenheim Bvilding! No doubt this present-day tangibility with my time at CU can partially be attributed to wandering through campus on occasion, as I both live and work nearby. However, the core reality is that my education at the University and in particular the pedagogy that sifted into my noggin during those Geography baccalaureate years represented a sea change in my understanding of the world and how to make one’s way through life with a more conscientious approach. The multiple sparks of imparted knowledge stoked internal fires of curiosity, and if you walk over to the “trophy case” by the Geography Office, you can see some bloke with my name on the Albert W. Smith Scholarship for 1993-1994.
Since that time, I’ve been a high school social sciences teacher in Denver Public Schools; an AmeriCorps volunteer for a year in southern Georgia; a GIS analyst in Fremont County, babyֱapp; and following a Master of Urban & Regional Planning (greatest degree acronym of all-time: MURP) degree from CU-Denver, fell into my current career a few years back as the manager of planning at Boulder’s JUWI Inc., a utility-scale solar energy facility development, engineering, and construction firm. Best job of all: dad to two kids, one who graduated from our wonderful archrival CSU with a zoology degree last weekend and the other…give it a minute! My wife and I have raised our kids mostly in the lovely burg of Longmont, along with a few chickens and goats.
Many a professor influenced my years in GEOG, though perhaps no one more than Brock Brown, who happened to provide an intro to the University during an orientation session for College of Arts & Sciences incoming Freshman in Chem 140, where among other things he spoke about The Big Picture Of Human Decision Making, focusing on America’s prolific focus on growing a plant that can’t be consumed – Kentucky bluegrass lawns – and the repercussions of that decision. That single orientation session cemented my already smoldering passion for All Things Geography into a flame that burns brightly today. Which brings me to…
A MOST IMPORTANT SIDEBAR: my 18-year old son Quinn Kimmett is an incoming Freshman this Fall at CU and…drumroll…his major? GEOGRAPHY! I promise I didn’t force this upon him…must be something genetic or in the water! I’m soooooo so so excited for him to enter the wide world that the CU Geography Department will open for him.
A special thanks to Morteza Karimzadeh who asked if I could write something for this newsletter! AND a well-earned KUDOS to all of the professors in GEOG who are crafting the next generation of critical thinkers, helping to establish a foothold of hope in a tumultuous world!
