Colorado State University

Scholarship Impact Award

Debbie C. Crans
Department of Chemistry

Debbie Crans, professor in the Department of Chemistry in the College of Natural Sciences, has received Colorado State University’s 2021 Scholarship Impact Award for Career Achievement, in recognition of her research accomplishments and professional impacts on the fields of both organic and inorganic chemistry.

The Scholarship Impact Award recognizes distinguished CSU faculty whose scholarship has had a major impact nationally or internationally. This is the first year the Office of the Vice President for Research has named two award recipients: the award for Recent Achievement focuses on the last 10 years of scholarship, and the award for Career Achievement honors an entire career of scholarship.

The Scholarship Impact Award includes $15,000 in funding to support the recipient’s research and/or scholarship program and an invitation to present a lecture on their scholarship.

Over her 34-year career at CSU, Crans has become a world expert in the area of metals in medicine, bioinorganic and biological chemistry. She is best known for her work on the chemistry and biochemistry of vanadium-containing compounds, which has earned her major national and international awards in both organic chemistry (Cope Scholar Award 2015) and inorganic chemistry (Vanadis Award 2004 and American Chemical Society Distinguished Service and Research Award 2019).

Most of this work involves the chemistry of vanadium compounds acting as anti-diabetic agents.

Crans pioneered the characterization of vanadium compounds as active insulin enhancing agents and documented the structural similarity between vanadium and phosphorus, which allows vanadium compounds to bind enzymes. Her work ranges from fundamental chemistry to in vivo clinical studies, designing new compounds, investigating their fundamental properties, and studying their biological activity.

Recently, Crans has worked on the effects of vanadium compounds as anti-cancer agents, taking two approaches to improving treatment of difficult-to-treat cancers that are resistant to cisplatin.

Crans joined CSU in 1987 after completing her Ph.D. in organic chemistry at Harvard. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

At CSU, she has maintained an active research group for the past 34 years with support from NSF, NIH, PRF and other donors, raising over $8 million in research funding. She holds one patent and has two active disclosures, and has presented 263 invited talks (with another dozen postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic).

Crans has mentored more than 60 graduate and postgraduate students and 200 undergraduates in research over her career, as well as publishing 236 peer-reviewed articles that have been cited more than 10,000 times, and edited 12 books or journal issues.

“The dramatic and broad impact of Professor Debbie Crans’ work brings to CSU prestige, honor and recognition,” wrote George Barisas, professor of chemistry and University Interdisciplinary Scholar at CSU, in nominating Crans for the Scholarship Impact Award. “I have always been impressed by the timeliness of her interests, the creativity of her research, the breadth of her international reputation, her concern for student success and her broad participation in University and professional activities. “

Crans, named the College of Natural Sciences’ Professor Laureate for 2015-17, currently chairs the department’s biological chemistry program and the faculty awards committee.

Her most recent national award, the 2019 ACS distinguished service award in inorganic chemistry, is the highest honor the organization can bestow on any member. Crans is only the third woman to receive this high distinction in the society’s 53-year history.

To celebrate Crans’ achievements, a full issue of the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry published in 2020 was dedicated to her.

Scholarship Impact Award

John McKay
Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management

John McKay, professor in the Department of Agricultural Biology in the College of Agricultural Sciences, has received Colorado State University’s 2021 Scholarship Impact Award for Recent Achievement, in recognition of the research he has undertaken and the significant impacts it has had on the field of plant ecology and evolution.

The Scholarship Impact Award recognizes distinguished CSU faculty whose scholarship has had a major impact nationally or internationally. This is the first year the Office of the Vice President for Research has named two award recipients: the award for Recent Achievement focuses on the last 10 years of scholarship, and the award for Career Achievement honors an entire career of scholarship.

The Scholarship Impact Award includes $15,000 in funding to support the recipient’s research and/or scholarship program and an invitation to present a lecture on their scholarship.

McKay’s recent research focuses on plant biology with an emphasis on linking genetic variation with physiological traits and ultimately performance in the field. For the past several years he has been using his expertise in ecology to understand drought tolerance in plants. He studies all aspects of plant biology “from roots to shoots,” and has done groundbreaking research on the genomic basis of drought response and local adaptation.

Amy Charkowski, head of his department, called work on drought tolerance “one of the most important areas needed to insure the future well-being of humanity” in her letter nominating McKay for the Scholarship Impact Award.

“Dr. McKay has helped put CSU on the map as a place to study and research drought tolerance,” she added.

Since 2010, when he joined CSU, McKay’s work has attracted nearly $10.5 million in external funding, the highest in the department. He has also published over 70 peer-reviewed articles, including papers in PNAS, Plant Cell, New Phytologist, that have generated over 9,500 citations, and presented dozens of guest lectures and papers at conferences and symposia around the world. McKay was named a CSU Monfort Professor in 2012 and elected an AAAS fellow in 2019.

McKay is renowned for translating his ecological and evolutionary findings to an applied context, such as biofuels production and crop breeding. His work in phenomics led to a patent on equipment for root phenotype analysis. This piece of equipment allows plant breeders and agronomists to measure how plant genetics and crop and soil management affect root phenotypes.

McKay was one of the first plant genomics experts to work with hemp after it once again became legal to grow in the United States. Hemp is a challenging plant to study because it lacks the decades of work invested into other crops. He also has worked with others in the College of Agricultural Sciences to teach an international drought workshop at CSU that has served nearly 150 students from at least 40 countries.

McKay holds a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York in Albany and a Ph.D. from the University of Montana in Missoula.

Board of Governors Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award

Blythe LaGasse
M.M., ’14
School of Music, Theatre, and Dance

Blythe LaGasse, professor of music therapy in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance in the College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University, is the recipient of the 2021 Board of Governors Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.

The award is presented in support of the Board’s belief that excellence in teaching involves creating a process of inquiry that stimulates the curiosity of students and that helps them develop and probe ideas. The teaching function increases motivation, challenges students, and channels inquiry, and LaGasse has demonstrated these characteristics throughout her career at CSU.

LaGasse teaches undergraduate courses in music therapy methods, practice and research. Her approach uses neurological and best-practice approaches, including service learning, peer-to-peer collaboration, feedback mechanisms, and technology to support student learning and success. Her overarching mission is to prepare students for careers as clinical music therapists and for advanced study in the field as scholars and practitioners, with a focus on developing clinical, musical, and research skills throughout the four-year undergraduate curriculum.

LaGasse also established the Undergraduate Music Therapy Research Academy, where music therapy students have the opportunity to engage in research with peers from across the university in collaboration with the Brainwaves Research Lab, which focuses on interdisciplinary neuroscience and music research. In 2020, she started a collaboration with the University of Colorado Hospitals on the use of music therapy and virtual reality for pain control in palliative care.

Her dedication as a teacher was rewarded at the college level in 2016, as she was the recipient of the College of Liberal Arts Excellence in Teaching Award. She was the 2017 recipient of the Online Innovative Educator (OLIE) Award and the 2020 recipient of the TILT Exceptional Achievement in Instructional Innovation in Service-Learning Award, among many other recognitions.

LaGasse joined the faculty in 2005 after completing her master’s in music therapy at CSU. Her undergraduate and Ph.D. work was competed at the University of Kansas. She currently serves as editor of the Journal of Music Therapy, has published dozens of academic articles and chapters, edited an introductory textbook to the music therapy profession, and has presented workshops and invited lectures online and around the world.

“Dr. LaGasse is an outstanding instructor and is fully prepared when working with students,” wrote fellow faculty member Wes Kenney after observing a class taught in April 2019. “The observed class exercises and presentations were well-thought-out from beginning to end. At no point did the energy lag as the students were constantly challenged to come up with answers or solutions based on information received. Dr. LaGasse kept changing how information was presented through questions, lecture, and demonstrations. The students were interested in the subject matter being presented and showed themselves to be fully involved gleaning knowledge through full participation.”

In 2020, LaGasse redesigned her courses, in part due to the pandemic and the need for different ways of learning. However, she took this as an opportunity to really look at all course alignment, assignments, and practices, making significant changes especially at the 200-level.

“When reviewing prior class structures, it seemed that the issue was that students who did not grasp concepts accepted a lower grade and moved forward, consistently making the same mistakes,” she wrote in her application for this award. “The new system allowed students to learn from their mistakes, building the foundation necessary for all other methods courses. Although there are modifications needed for this new structure, the students showed higher competency throughout class, as compared to prior years.”

LaGasse is also a strong proponent of service learning for those using music in health care.

“What I appreciate about service learning is how this experience helps to shift students from the idea of ‘healing’ or ‘changing’ people with disabilities (an ableist idea) toward a mindset of using their skills to help each individual realize their own potential,” she wrote. “This change in mindset is essential because it pulls students away from the idea of savior-ship to understating their role as an ally and an advocate for other people.”

Alumni of the program report that they have been able to use this concept in their professional lives.

“Dr. LaGasse gave me the skill to develop new ideas that allow my clients to best meet their goals,” one said.

“To say that her method of teaching was effective and engaging would be a gross understatement,” said another. “It not only helped me understand the class material, but it also gave me a framework of inquiry that I can use when I am faced with challenges in the workplace.”

Current students also appreciate her teaching.

“Since returning to college after some time off I can safely say Dr. LaGasse is one of the best teachers I have had. She has exceeded what I was hoping for in a university level education and has made the transformation from community college feel natural,” one wrote in a class survey. “Dr. LaGasse is very knowledgeable with music therapy and we are lucky to have her at CSU.”

Monfort Professor

Emily V. Fischer
Department of Atmospheric Science

Emily V. Fischer, an associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric Science in the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering, has been named a Monfort Professor, one of Colorado State University’s highest honors.

Monfort Professorships are awarded to faculty who are considered rising stars in their fields. The two-year awards provide $50,000 each year for recipients to work on specific research projects and are made possible by the Monfort Family Foundation.

Recognized as an international leader in the study of atmospheric chemistry and air quality, Fischer is particularly well known for her work on wildfire emissions. In 2018, she was the overall leader of a major aircraft campaign to study smoke from wildfires across the western U.S. as it travels downwind. Due in large part to her tremendous efforts, the campaign, supported by NSF and involving dozens of scientific participants from 6 universities and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, was a major success and is revolutionizing our understanding of the composition of smoke emitted from wildfires and its transformation during long range transport.

“Emily is an amazing scientific leader,” wrote her nominator and department head, Professor Jeffery Collett. “Most atmospheric chemists specialize in measurements or modeling; Emily’s success in building high-profile research efforts in both areas attests to the great talent and energy she brings to the field.”

To date she has published 80 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals and received more than $10 million in sponsored research funding ($7.6 million as principal investigator) from a broad range of federal agencies, including NSF, NASA, EPA, NOAA, and NPS.

Fischer was named one of “10 Scientists to Watch in 2020” by Science News and has received major awards from the American Geophysical Union (Macelwane Medal, 2019) and the American Meteorological Society (Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award in Chemistry, 2020), among numerous others. In 2018 she received a Graduate Advising and Mentorship Award from the CSU Graduate Student Council.

Beyond her extensive atmospheric chemistry research, Fischer is nationally recognized for her efforts to improve participation of women in the geosciences. Her leadership of the NSF-supported PROGRESS (PROmoting Geoscience Research, Education and SuccesS) project has led to tremendous breakthroughs in strategies to support the persistence of women in the field.

Through this project Emily and her collaborators demonstrated strong increases in retention associated with new mentoring practices that paired undergraduate women with established women in the field.

PROGRESS has just been funded by NSF to expand efforts to new geographic regions and to increase focus on students of color. Fischer is also part of a national campaign, Science Moms, providing climate change outreach.

“Emily is the most energetic and enthusiastic faculty member I have encountered in my career,” Collett wrote. “She is committed to using science as a tool to better the lives of people.”

Fischer received her Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of Washington in 2010. From 2011-2013 she served as a NOAA Climate and Global Change Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for the Environment before joining CSU as an assistant professor in August 2013. She was promoted to associate professor in 2019.

Fischer has devised a Monfort Action Plan to take advantage of improving low-cost sensor technology to identify impacts of air pollution on economically disadvantaged and minority communities. According to Collett, this powerful plan will energize and catalyze Fischer’s contributions to CSU’s land-grant mission to aid Colorado’s citizens.

Monfort Professor

Lauren B. Shomaker
Department of Human Development and Family Studies

Lauren B. Shomaker, an associate professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the College of Health and Human Sciences, has been named a Monfort Professor, one of Colorado State University’s highest honors.

Monfort Professorships are awarded to faculty who are considered rising stars in their fields. The two-year awards provide $50,000 each year for recipients to work on specific research projects and are made possible by the Monfort Family Foundation.

Shomaker is a nationally recognized scholar in a critical, interdisciplinary, and highly innovative area of research, focusing on the role of depression in metabolic disease risk, particularly during adolescence. This combination of psychology and physiology is dedicated to alleviating health disparities in populations that disproportionately bear the disease burden of metabolic and mental health illness.

Specifically, Shomaker is exploring the links between depression and diabetes. Both are serious public health issues that disparately affect racial/ethnic minority families and present earlier and more severely in females. Existing data primarily focus on adults who have developed Type 2 diabetes, and her unique impact on the field has been to extend the science to adolescence using a prevention lens. Her work employs strong community-engaged collaborations in Latinx, African American, and Native American populations.

In a series of randomized controlled trials, Shomaker’s team found that intervening to decrease depression in at-risk, primarily Latino/African American adolescents, using brief, cost- effective, mental health interventions, improves insulin resistance a year later.

“Dr. Shomaker’s work is critical in helping us continue to build an impactful and well-recognized footprint in innovative research that weds mental and physiological health toward the laudable goals of reducing disease burden, particularly in populations in which health inequities abound, wrote her nominators, CHHS Dean Lise Youngblade and Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Students Matt Hickey, himself a University Distinguished Teaching Scholar. “She possesses a rare generosity of spirit, and her commitment to collaboration, team science, and supporting and mentoring others can only continue to help us achieve our institutional goals.”

Since coming to CSU in 2013, Shomaker has been awarded over $8.6 million in grant funding. Her work has been funded by five institutes at the NIH, which underscores the transdisciplinary appeal of her research. Most recently, she has received two large grants from the National Institutes of Health totaling $5.5 million, both as the principal investigator.

Shomaker has published 82 peer-reviewed articles, the majority in top-tier journals. She is highly visible in her field, with 99 conference presentations to date and another 48 talks, including invited presentations at national/international scientific conferences and invited talks for local and national research groups and meetings.

In addition to her position at CSU, Shomaker maintains affiliations with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, where she completed her postdoctoral work; Children’s Hospital Colorado; and the Colorado School of Public Health. She was also named a Fellow of The Obesity Society in 2019.

The College of Health and Human Sciences recognized Shomaker in 2016 with the College Tenure Track Scholarly Excellence Award.

“Dr. Shomaker’s commitment to her internationally recognized research program in no way diminishes her commitment to and excellence in teaching and mentoring, nor her exceptional commitment to service,” Youngblade and Hickey added. “She is highly engaged across all aspects of the university mission, and indeed is recognized as an outstanding instructor and mentor.”

Shomaker plans to use her Monfort Award to leverage clinical trial biomarker data to expand critical knowledge of stress physiology underlying the depression-insulin resistance connection in adolescents at risk for Type 2 diabetes. She will also develop a novel, pilot feasibility study of intervening to treat depression symptoms and improve core mental and physical health indices in adolescents with Type 1 diabetes.