 This issue of UWYO marks the beginning of our fifth year of publication. It seems like only yesterday that the staff waited with anticipation to open the first shipment of magazines in 1999. Looking back on the dozens of stories we’ve covered, it’s hard to believe all that’s transpired in those five years – the one-year anniversary of the murder of Matt Shepard, UW’s partnership with the Wyoming Business Council, a first-person perspective on conflict in the Middle East, the plan to grow enrollment to 13,000 by the year 2005, campus safety, UW’s five-year DISTINCTION campaign, the Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning, freshman interest groups, international programs, distance education, the state of the Greek community, and the deaths of eight student-athletes. We’ve also brought you stories of the many individual and collaborative accomplishments of our students, members of our faculty and staff, and our alumni. This issue continues that tradition. Within these pages, you’ll find stories of faculty research into chronic wasting disease in deer and elk and an alumna’s efforts to help prevent bioterrorism; UW’s work with tribes on the Wind River Indian Reservation to preserve native languages; a profile of a remarkable student who earned a coveted Goldwater Scholarship and snapshots of next year’s student government leaders; the hypnotic music of Balinese gamelan; an alumnus who celebrated his victory over cancer by running an ultramarathon at the North Pole; a preview of the women’s soccer team’s breakout season; and much, much more. Of particular significance is a summary of the university’s Strategic Plan for Intercollegiate Athletics, designed to help UW become more competitive in the NCAA Division I Mountain West Conference. University trustees will review the plan at their September meeting, and the actions they take likely will be based in part upon the input provided by members of the UW family and the Wyoming public. We hope this article will encourage you to read the plan and submit your comments before the trustees meet in September. Another special article is a first-person report from the battlefields of Iraq, by David Gunn, a UW alumnus serving with 101st Airborne Division. Many of our alumni, like Gunn, have volunteered their time and talents to write for UWyo, supplementing the work of writers from the Division of University Public Relations. Among the contributors to this issue are Lara Azar, a UW alumna whose day job is as press secretary to Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal; Julie Mankin, a public relations coordinator for the UW Foundation who, as a student, also competed for the UW rodeo team; and Erika Knudson, a client relations manager for the Indiana University-Bloomington publications office who edited the Owen Wister Review in her senior year at UW. As you can see, UWYO magazine is not only written for alumni and friends of the University of Wyoming, but also by them. Jay N. Fromkin |