Editorial Cartoon by Bob Englehart

Colorado’s Governor Recalls Time at Wesleyan

The first time someone told Governor of Colorado and Wesleyan alumnus John Hickenlooper ’74 that he should run for public office, he nearly laughed them out of the room. “I said, ‘Why the hell would I ever do that,’” Hickenlooper said. “[Even growing up,] I never ran for student council or class president, and I didn’t really hang out with the people that did. This kind of caught me by surprise.”

If there ever was a perfect example of the triumph of a broad liberal arts education, Hickenlooper’s serendipitous path to the Governor’s mansion is it. The English major, turned geologist, turned brewpub owner ran for Mayor of Denver in 2003 as something of a joke.

“In 2001, some smart people who did work in politics—and they were my customers so I knew them—suggested I run for mayor,” Hickenlooper said. “They said, in a funny way, you’re perfect for who ought to be in politics. You’re a small-business person, someone in the service industry who understands restaurants, and somebody who understands science. So kind of as a joke, we decided to run. We didn’t do opposition research and I’ve never done a negative ad. Our focus was really on putting up a positive vision for Denver. And we did a few very funny TV ads that are still up on YouTube. And no one could believe it as we were running, because in 2003, we beat these lifetime politicians who had been in office since 1987 two to one.”

Hickenlooper may not have taken the most direct route to a career in politics, but growing up, he always had the sense that he wanted to leave a public legacy. Despite his initial disinterest in the political sphere, public service is actually in his blood: his great-grandfather Andrew Hickenlooper was a renowned Civil War general and both a Lieutenant Governor and U.S. Marshal for the Southern District of Ohio.

However, Governor Hickenlooper learned little about his family heritage growing up. His father died from cancer when he was eight, and he felt the absence acutely.

“Especially for men and boys, if your father dies you have to figure out [how] to raise yourself,” Hickenlooper said. “You know, showing yourself how to comb your hair, or what kinds of pants look good. Because you learn that stuff when you are very young.”

For a long time, Hickenlooper had little idea what he wanted to do with his life, but he believes there was something deeply existential about his lack of direction toward one set path. According to him, he internalized the family tragedy as motivation. He wanted to make enough noise in his life to leave a legacy that one day would be impossible to ignore.

“When I was a kid, I was skinny, had acne, and wore really thick, ugly black plastic glasses,” Hickenlooper said. “So I always sort of felt like I had to prove myself. After my dad died, there was this sense that you want your voice to be heard out in the cosmos. Kind of in a weird way, you want your father way, way out there to be able to hear your voice.”

With his father absent, Hickenlooper taught himself many adolescent rites of passage. Yet, he discovered Wesleyan through family ties. He attended his half-brother’s graduation from the University in 1968, and reminisces fondly about how cool he thought it was that The Grateful Dead played a show on Foss Hill amidst widespread campus unrest in 1969. Beyond this trivia, Hickenlooper loved Wesleyan’s approach to diversity and its open-minded curriculum.

In going about his academic experience, Hickenlooper forged as eclectic a path as he could. Although he majored in English, Hickenlooper was dyslexic and felt that he could never keep up in classes where there was heavy reading. Thus, he took a course load that included piano, “how to design and fabricate stained glass windows,” dance, and electronic music.

“I took all different things I thought would help me,” Hickenlooper said. “I thought I wanted to be in some sort of creative role in life. But it turned out everything I taught, I was never very good at. But it’s nice, because I can still play the piano, guitar, and banjo to this day.”

It was only just before his undergraduate education came to a close that Hickenlooper finally found his niche. After sitting in on a lecture in one of his friends Earth & Environmental Science classes, he realized that he loved the subject more than anything he had ever studied.

Subsequently, Hickenlooper was accepted into Wesleyan’s Master’s program in geology for students with a non-science background. He then took chemistry and math classes for two years and over the summer at Harvard University. He did field work in the Beartooth Mountains of southern Montana, where he observed the most beautiful landscape he’d ever seen. After graduation, he drove a beat-up Volkswagen fastback from his brother’s house in Berkeley to do more fieldwork in Costa Rica.

If Hickenlooper’s post-college years seem like a narrative straight out of “On the Road,” their surrealistic nature has never escaped him, especially when he settled down in Denver to become a professional geologist in 1981. After working for the oil company Buckhorn Petroleum for five years, Hickenlooper realized that he was a pretty big extrovert, and a nine-to-five desk job was never going to do it for his more adventurous tendencies. Before he could make a career switch, the price of oil collapsed and most of his company was laid off, including Hickenlooper himself. Even though he was out of work for almost two and a half years, Hickenlooper faced this latest setback the same way he had dealt with adversity all his life: reinvention.

“It’s funny, when I first got laid off, I was lucky,” Hickenlooper said. “Our company had found a lot of oil and we had some anti-takeover provisions in our compensation, so I ended up getting a year of severance. You know, I was looking through my old letters and I was never moping around, I was kind of excited. This didn’t work out, now I have to find something else, and what am I going to try next.”

After trying to find another job as a geologist and even toying with becoming a writer, the next chapter in Hickenlooper’s life was spurred by a visit to a California brewpub, a trip made with the same brother who had inspired his interest in Wesleyan. Enamored by the self-sufficiency of the restaurant-brewery fusion, Hickenlooper began to talk incessantly about the superiority of the establishment’s beer.

Eventually his friends started to tell him to open a brewpub of his own. Despite no experience with running a restaurant, that is precisely what he decided to do. After going to the library to figure out how to write a business plan, Hickenlooper dove headfirst into his new life as a small-business owner and opened the WynKoop Brewing Company in 1988.

Initially, getting the business off the ground was grueling. Hickenlooper worked between 60 and 70 hours per week and paid himself a salary of less than $26,000. But soon, things started to pick up, and Hickenlooper and his co-owners began to open brewpubs all over the Midwest. It was the opening of Coors Field two blocks away in 1995 that caused the WynKoop to explode in popularity.

“All of a sudden, we became rich,”Hickenlooper said.

While Hickenlooper could have franchised his pub or enjoyed the revenue stability that Coors Field had provided, he was still restlessly searching for his place in life. He began to become deeply engaged with the Denver community, joining non-profit boards such as the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts and the Denver Art Museum. He got involved with the battle over the naming rights for the Broncos’ new stadium, and soon he become a well-known figure in the city.

Hickenlooper soon realized that his favorite part of the day was the time he spent in the non-profit community. The intersection between business, arts, and public relations work suited both Hickenlooper’s multifaceted interests and his extroverted personality. Becoming some sort of a public servant could fulfill the higher calling he had sought since the death of his father. While he laughs that he initially ran for mayor as a joke, considering this decision, you get the sense that deep down, his political move was serious and deliberate from the beginning.

In 2005, Hickenlooper was named one of Time Magazine’s top five big-city mayors, and after getting re-elected as mayor in 2007 with 97 percent of the vote, there was talk of him filling Ken Salazar’s vacated Senate seat. While that didn’t pan out, Hickenlooper got the call in 2010 from incumbent Governor Bill Ritter, asking him to run for the soon-to-be open governorship. Hickenlooper easily defeated challenger Tom Tancredo and became the first Denver mayor to be elected Governor of Colorado in over 130 years.

For a public servant who has thoroughly disproven the conventions of how to carve out a career in politics, he has been a remarkably shrewd and effective leader. Despite running a nonpartisan campaign focused on balancing Colorado’s deficit, Hickenlooper has acted on the front lines of implementing socially liberal policies. He took on the NRA to institute stricter gun control regulations. He questioned the practice of capital punishment. He’s championed criminal justice reform after originally embracing harsher policing policies as mayor.

Most famously, he’s spearheaded Colorado’s marijuana legalization efforts. However, in this case, he did not always agree with the pace of reform. While supporting the decriminalization of marijuana and its use for medicinal purposes, he has publicly expressed opposition to Amendment 64, which was passed in 2012 and legalized possession of up to one ounce of the drug. Has his mind changed in the following years?

“I was against it, because you don’t want to be in conflict with federal law,” Hickenlooper said. “You don’t want to be the first to create an entire regulatory framework. But, now that it’s been going for a few years, we have anecdotal reports that I think are reliable, that we have fewer drug dealers than we had before.”

Hickenlooper also wanted to dispel the notion that legalization is merely driven by a financial calculus.

“Some people said we wanted to do it just to get the tax money,” Hickenlooper said. “That’s stupid. Why would you risk the health of your kids and your citizens? If this is really bad for people, getting tax revenues is a pretty bad excuse. But if you end up sending less people to jail, and you end up with less drug dealers trying to sell drugs of all kinds to kids or anybody, that is reasonable. We’ve taken the tax revenues and we’ve helped fund programs for drug rehabilitation and kids that get derailed from a constructive life. We’ve dedicated a lot of money to try and get them back in a good life.”

If politics forces everyone to eventually take sides, Hickenlooper likes to at least preserve his nonpartisan, centrist appeal in tone. What has allowed him to push deeply progressive policies in a politically divided state has been pairing his utilitarian philosophy with the desire to keep his finger on the pulse of the communities he serves.

“I think mostly just by listening,” Hickenlooper said. “You know states and cities are made up of all different kinds of people, so you really have to listen hard to understand what is the rhythm behind all that noise out there. There’s a melody and a rhythm in there somewhere, and what is it that will make the greatest number of people happy and give the greatest value to the community.”

Staying true to his business and non-profit experience, he has also streamlined government in Colorado and filled his cabinet with many people who possess management skills. While he certainly doesn’t speak about the relationship between business and government in the way that Donald Trump does, he does agree that government benefits from employing individuals with diverse backgrounds, especially those with organizational management and leadership experience.

“We’re taking all this [management] training that people receive from getting MBAs, and we’re giving it very narrowly to just business,” Hickenlooper said. “If you look at it, government is about 30 percent of our economy. And non-profits are another 30 percent. And yet all the training in management and leadership goes into business.”

Hickenlooper operates in a tranquil space, and his desire to forge a consensus on major issues seems sincere. What, then, does he think of an election season that has been the complete opposite? Specifically, what would he do if Donald Trump becomes president? One has to wonder if another extended trip to Costa Rica is in his future.

“No, I’d have two more years of being a sitting governor, so I couldn’t leave and do that to my adopted state,” Hickenlooper said. “But I do think that he might be reinventing himself again. So, I’m not going prejudge him. I will say that he scares the living daylights out of me. Some of the things he says are just so provocative and difficult. If he somehow manages to get elected, which I’m going to work hard to make sure doesn’t happen, he’s the President of the United States. And I respect the system our country has created.”

There’s even a chance that Hickenlooper himself may play a direct role in the election to come. A longtime supporter of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Hickenlooper is one of the superdelegates that has already pledged support to her campaign. And while he has dispelled rumors of being a potential pick for the Vice Presidency, they persist anyway. Since Hickenlooper occupies a space between the establishment and outsider status, what does he say to students who are disillusioned by the DNC’s cozy relationship to Clinton, or their frustrations with the lack of viable alternatives?

“What I tell young people all the time is, ‘get your friends to vote,’” Hickenlooper said. “Don’t complain because the more experienced people in the party are supporting Hillary. Go out and get more people to vote.”

His take on the activism of today is similarly nuanced, if not a little nostalgic for the great battles for equality of the past.

“I say to kids, ‘I was you once,’” Hickenlooper said. “I marched on Washington to oppose the Vietnam War. I went to the first Earth Day in 1969. But, I also understood that there were people who were older and they thought they had answers, and maybe they were right and maybe they were wrong. But we had a system whereby everybody had a voice, and that is the amazing thing about America.”

If there’s anything that sticks out about Hickenlooper’s political philosophy, it’s his respect, and even admiration, for a democratic process that once seemed completely foreign to him. Then again, he didn’t expect to become a brewpub owner or a geologist either. Perhaps he’s still got a few more tricks up his sleeve.

This article was written by Aaron Stagoff-Belfort and first appeared, in a lengthier version, in the Wesleyan Argus.  Abridged and published with permission.

Hartford Foundation Growth Responds to Community Needs

The Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the community foundation for 29 communities in Greater Hartford, awarded more than $33 million in grants to the region’s nonprofit agencies and educational institutions in 2015, according to the organization’s newly released annual report. The Foundation’s 2015 grantmaking was based on the recognition that "a vibrant and strong Greater Hartford region requires that all residents, especially those with the greatest need, have equitable opportunities to achieve and flourish," the report stated.  In order to make this possible, the Foundation provided support to nonprofit and public entities that "work to ensure everyone has access to the resources and services they need to thrive."

The Foundation invested 30 percent of its grants in education from birth through high school, and new and renewed college scholarship, according to the report. Grants for family and social services received 20 percent; health – 11 percent; arts and culture – 11 percent; community and economic development – 19 percent, general – 5 percent and summer programs – 4 percent.

“Thanks to the support of our generous donors, the Hartford Foundation, working with our many community partners, is leading and participating in collaborative approaches to harness resources and increase community impact,” said Linda J. Kelly, president of the Hartford Foundation.

The Foundation received gifts totaling $17.5 million and established 29 new funds, including a new giving circle, the “Black Giving Circle Fund,” to address issues facing Greater Hartford’s Black community.

“Our newly adopted strategic plan, with its focus on equity and opportunity, prioritizes learning from birth through college, vibrant communities and family economic security,” Kelly said. “We look forward to amplifying our efforts to address community needs to meet the broad-based and changing issues in our region, and create pathways to opportunity for all residents.”

The annual report highlights the wide variety of work the Foundation has supported throughout Greater Hartford, including:

Alliance District Grants (Bloomfield, East Hartford, Windsor): More than $1.5 million was awarded to three Greater Hartford school districts to establish or deepen each district’s partnerships with family and community, to improve student outcomes and promote equitable educational opportunity throughout the region.

• Bloomfield was awarded a grant to significantly expand Bloomfield Public Schools’ family and community partnerships supporting an extended school day and increasing yearlong support of student learning.
• East Hartford Public Schools received a grant to develop a new Teaching and Learning Center and other strategies that will enable it to support children’s learning, development, and success through increased family, school, and community partnerships.
• Windsor Public Schools received a grant to establish a new Office of Family and Community Partnership to develop families, school staff, and community partners’ knowledge, skills, and other capacities to engage in productive partnerships focused on student success.

The Hartford Foundation has approved $3.95 million over three years in grants and technical assistance to support the Career Pathways Initiative, a collaborative, crosscutting approach to providing residents with education and workforce training that places them on a trajectory to ascend a career ladder in industries that have job openings. The initiative targets low-literate and low-skilled residents of the Capitol Region, including single parents, at-risk youth, immigrants, homeless heads of household, former offenders, and others who need a broad range of coordinated services to be successful. The initiative enhances or expands existing programs and pilots new approaches.

Journey Home was awarded a three-year, $199,197 grant to support the region’s Coordinated Access Network, a collaboration of services providers whose goal is to establish a coordinated region wide placement and referral system for homeless individuals and families.

The Nonprofit Support Program continues to be a critical source of capacity building and knowledge sharing among our region’s nonprofit organizations.  In 2015, 218 nonprofits were awarded 96 grants totaling $1.74 million. These grants included support for technical assistance, strategic technology, human resources, board leadership development, executive transition, financial management and evaluation capacity.

Metro Hartford Progress Points, a partnership between the Hartford Foundation and eight other regional entities, launched the second edition of the Progress Points Report which focused on access to better schools, better jobs and stronger neighborhoods.

Since its founding in 1925, the Foundation has awarded approximately $654 million in grants.

Women’s Wellness is Common Thread for 2016 Hall of Fame Inductees

The remarkable women being honored at this year’s Induction Ceremony & Celebration for the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame come from three different generations and varying backgrounds, and have made tremendous contributions to advance awareness of health and wellness issues facing women and whose work inspires others to advocacy and action. Jane Pauley, one of broadcasting’s most respected journalists and longtime advocate for children’s health, education and mental health; Rebecca Lobo, award-winning athlete, Olympic Gold Medalist and successful television analyst, author and motivational speaker; and Dr. Joyce Yerwood, first African American woman physician in Fairfield County, founder of the Yerwood Center and pioneer in drug treatment programs; will be inducted into the Hall of Fame on November 2.

The theme for this year’s event will be “Women's Wellness: Awareness, Advocacy & Action.”

“Wellness is critical to women’s opportunities to achieve and succeed across all fields, and we don’t have to look far to see the health and wellness challenges women face daily,” says Katherine Wiltshire, executive director of the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame.

“From athletics and advocacy to providing direct healthcare services, our 2016 Inductees have worked in diverse fields to promote women’s wellness,” continues Wiltshire. “We are thrilled to honor these incredible women and share their stories in an effort to inspire even more women and girls to take informed action when it comes to their own wellbeing.”

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports, for example, that more than 60 percent of U.S. women do not get adequate exercise; data from the National Institute of Mental Health suggests that more than 20 percent of U.S. women struggle with mental illness; Kaiser Family Foundation research shows that one fifth of women cannot afford to see a doctor.

To be considered for induction to the Connecticut Women’s Hall of fame, a nominee must:

• be a Connecticut native and/or Connecticut resident
• be the first woman, historic or living, to achieve recognition in her field of endeavor; or have a lifetime of achievement in that field
• have made a significant statewide contribution to arts, athletics, business, government, philanthropy, humanities, science, education, etc.

Pauley was the co-host of TODAY on NBC from 1976 to 1989, anchored Dateline NBC for more than a decade and in 2004 became the host of her own daytime program, The Jane Pauley Show. Pauley is the recipient of numerous Emmy and other awards, including the prestigious Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism and the Gracie Allen Award from the Foundation of American Women in Radio & Television. Since 2014, Pauley has been contributing to CBS Sunday Morning and has guest-hosted CBS This Morning and the CBS Evening News.

Both on and off the court, Rebecca Lobo personifies success. As the 1995 consensus National Player of the Year, she led the University of Connecticut Women’s Basketball team to its first National Championship. In 1996, she won a gold medal as the youngest member of the U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team, before embarking on a successful seven-year WNBA career. In 2001, Ms. Lobo and her mother, RuthAnn, founded “The RuthAnn and Rebecca Lobo Scholarship in Allied Health” at the University of Connecticut to encourage diversity in the health professions. Rebecca was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010, and today works as a television analyst, author, and motivational speaker.

“Her most visible contribution to the city,” the Stamford Advocate reported at Dr. Joyce Yerwood’s death at age 78 in 1987, “was her role in founding the community center that would bear her name.”  According to published reports, the story of the Yerwood Center started with a child's statement. While talking to a group of children shortly before starting her practice, one of them said to her, "You're a colored doctor. I never knew that a colored woman could be a doctor."

Born in Texas, Yerwood graduated from Meharry Medical College in Tennesse and then moved to Stamford with her husband, Dr. Joseph L. Carwin, a community leader for whom Carwin Park is named, the Stamford Advocate reported.  Today, the Yerwood Center hosts the Boys & Girls Club, which had a grand opening just a few months ago.

Last year’s inductees to the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame were Carolyn Miles, President and CEO of Save the Children, Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, and Margaret Bourke-White, the first female photographer for LIFE magazine and first female American war photojournalist.

The mission of the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame (CWHF) is to honor publicly the achievements of Connecticut women, preserve their stories, educate the public and inspire the continued achievements of women and girls.

Founded in 1994 in Hartford, CWHF is a provider of innovative educational programs and tools that inspire women and girls to believe in their unlimited potential. With more than 100 inductees, CWHF “leverages these powerful stories and make history relevant through programs for educators, multi-media presentations and traveling exhibits offered free-of-charge.”

The 23rd Annual Induction Ceremony & Celebration will be Wednesday, November 2, 2016, 6:00-9:00 P.M. at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford. The CWHF website, www.cwhf.org, is a “Virtual Hall” where visitors can explore all that CWHF has to offer.

Number of Special Education Students in CT Schools Continues to Increase, Data Shows

The number of Connecticut students in kindergarten through 12^th grade with disabilities eligible for special education and related services has increased by nearly 6,000 between the 2008-09 school year and the current school year, as the overall student population has dropped by more than 32,500 students in that time. Data included in a new website developed by the Connecticut State Department of Education indicates that the prevalence of special education in Connecticut schools has increased from 11.6 percent of students to 13.4 percent of students over the past seven years.

The prevalence of autism has doubled in the overall school population, from eight-tenths of one percent in 2008-09 to 1.6 percent in the current year.  The percentage of students with learning disability has also increased, while the percentage with speech or language impairment has dropped, as a percentage of the overall student population.

Overall, the Special Education K-12 count in 2008-09 was 64,187 students.  In the 2015-16 school year, the number has climbed to 70,055, an eight percent increase, even as the total student count has gone from 555,411 to 522,906.

The website points out that “Prevalence rate is a statistic about the identification of students with disabilities eligible for special education and related services,” adding that “Connecticut has seen increases in the number and percent of students with disabilities statewide over the last five years.”

The site also notes that the overall decreasing public school enrollment causes the prevalence rate to appear to grow at a must faster rate than one would perceive from actual special education count data.

Connecticut State Department of Education Commissioner Dianna R. Wentzell launched the new website, www.edsight.ct.gov, in late April.  It is designed to strengthen transparency and streamline online access to important school and district information.  The site integrates information from over 30 different sources – some reported by districts and others from external sources.

“The launch of our new data portal is a critical step in our mission to ensure all Connecticut students have access to the kind of high-quality education that prepares them for success in college, career and civic life,” Commissioner Wentzell said.

Over the coming months, additional information and reports will be made accessible to the public through this portal. The site is the culmination of more than two years of work and development by the Department with support from important partners, including the state Department of Administrative Services.

The Department also joined the world of social media last week with the launch of an official Facebook page and Twitter account. The Department’s Facebook page address is http://www.facebook.com/ctdepartmentofeducation. On Twitter, the Department is @EducateCT.

CT Is National Microgrid Leader, Seeking Electricity Resiliency

The cover story in this month’s edition of State Legislatures magazine, published by the National Conference of State Legislatures, examines new technologies that are keeping the lights on when disasters strike the electric grid.  And it turns out that New England – especially Connecticut – is showing the way for states across the country in one of the new approaches, the electricity microgrid. The sit-up-and-take-notice event that has sent state legislature scurrying to act was SuperStorm Sandy, which knocked out power to nearly 8 million people across 15 Eastern states, including wide swaths of Connecticut.  One of the primary responses aimed at making the electric system more resilient has been the development of microgrids, and Connecticut has been swifter than most in seizing the technological advance. 

Microgrids are an example of how state legislators are seeking to make the electrical grid more reliable and resilient through strategies that strengthen infrastructure and shorten the time it takes to restore power, reporter Dan Shea explained in the article.  The whole idea is to minimize the damage and disruption of a disaster.

The article was drawn from research for the NCSL report, State Efforts to Protect the Electric Grid, published in April.  The report points out that nearly 40 percent of the U.S. population—over 123 million people—live in coastal shoreline counties, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

“We had Irene. We had Sandy. We had a snowstorm that went on forever. We had people in the dark, substations threatened by flooding and power out for eight, 10, 12 days,” Connecticut State Representative Lonnie Reed (D-Branford) told the publication. “We began to see just how vulnerable the whole interconnected system is.”

Many Northeastern states have taken action on microgrids, but the Connecticut General Assembly has been the most active legislative body, Shea reports, passing or updating microgrid-inclusive bills in each of the past four years (2012-2015). These laws offer a range of options for potential microgrid developers—and could even incentivize distributed generation developers to expand their projects to incorporate microgrid technologies.

The three main incentives are:

• A microgrid grant and pilot program;
• The Connecticut Green Bank’s commercial sustainable energy program;
• And municipal energy improvement districts.

The Connecticut General Assembly passed legislation enacting a microgrid pilot program in 2012 – the first in the nation according to the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP). Initially, the program granted $18 million to nine projects. The initiative was later extended and given an additional $30 million to expand microgrid deployment, Shea reports.

Eligibility was extended to municipalities, electric distribution companies, municipal electric companies, energy improvement districts and private entities. On March 6, 2014, Wesleyan University in Middletown became the first of the CT microgrid projects to come online, according to the DEEP website.

The State Legislatures article reports that in 2015, lawmakers in 17 states, including New York and New Jersey, introduced more than two dozen bills on microgrids, six of which have been enacted. Several pending bills direct state agencies to study microgrids, while at least six states are considering legislation that would offer grants, loans or other incentives to develop them. Microgrids, although growing most rapidly in the Northeast, are taking root elsewhere, including California, State Legislatures reports.

In addition, a growing number of businesses and organizations are also investing in resilient systems that allow them to operate independently whether the grid is up or down.

“You’re really talking about having an economic leg up if you have the capacity to stay open and operational when others aren’t,” Reed told State Legislatures.

The state legislature has also directed the Connecticut Green Bank to include microgrid projects within its definition of “energy improvements” that the bank is authorized to make appropriations and issue bonds or other obligations to help finance.

The legislature has also authorized any municipal government to establish an energy improvement district by vote of its legislative body. The state statute outlines how the district’s affairs will be managed and authorizes a board to fund the development of energy improvement projects within the district.

Nationally, more than a dozen states introduced legislation in 2015 that calls for greater diversity in power sources—from expanding renewables to supporting nuclear and fossil fuels.  The State Legislatures report indicates that those efforts are likely to intensify in the years ahead, as weather events are predicted to become more frequent and more severe.

PERSPECTIVE: Driven by Discovery

by Dr. France A. Córdova You deserve hearty congratulations for this remarkable achievement. This is an important milestone – you now have a degree, and all the expertise and knowledge that slip of paper implies, and you are charged with venturing out into a big world – full of possibilities. After all, you are ENGINEERS – you design and make things. The world is open to your creativity.

This is also a particularly special milestone for your University, since you are UConn Engineering's centennial graduating class. You join a long lineage of top-flight engineers, including the man this very arena is named after, Harry A. Gampel.

I'm not sure that Harry, a 1943 civil engineering major, knew what a powerhouse the Huskies would become when he pledged to help build this arena. But I guarantee he would be disappointed if I did not also congratulate the men's and women's basketball teams on another spectacular year.

Gampel Pavilion has become a home of excellence: the men's team with another appearance in the national tournament, and the women's team undefeated for a record-breaking fourth year. For some of you, they have been national champions every year of your time at UConn Engineering! It may seem inevitable at this point, but I can promise you nothing about being a champion is inevitable.

It takes teamwork and dedication, early mornings and late nights, risk and redemption. It takes, in other words, the same qualities you will have to demonstrate as engineers.

Nothing is inevitable about being a scientist or an engineer – and that's one of the most frustrating and wonderful things about our chosen field. Experiments fail and hypotheses crumble. Data might not be as neat, as revealing as you'd hoped, technology might break at the worst moment, you might spend years chasing a question only to have the answer continually slip away. But then there are wonderful moments of discovery -- and I promise you the euphoria makes up for all the frustration.

I am driven by discovery. As a young girl, I wanted to be a detective. Parents – think Nancy Drew – I wanted to be Nancy. I love a difficult problem, putting the puzzle pieces together. This passion drew me to astronomy, a field with lots of Big Mysterious Questions: What are the origins of stars? Does life exist on distant planets, and what might it look like? Surely not like you or me! What is the nature of 95% of the mass energy content of the universe? It turns out that we know so little…

It took me a while to actually get to astronomy – the path of a scientist or engineer is always more of a random walk than people think – but once I got my own science degree, my own entry into the "real world," all I wanted to do was be a cosmic detective.

As a Ph.D. student I studied x-ray astronomy, then a nascent field. I used a high-energy satellite, controlled by the Goddard Space Flight Center, to collect data on close binary stars. One night I got word that one of these stars had gone into visual outburst. I ran to my thesis advisor and told him we must stop the satellite scanning and point it directly at the star.

My advisor asked me if I was absolutely sure I would detect something extraordinary – after all, pointing that satellite was an expensive proposition. I took a deep breath, crossed my fingers behind my back and said without pause, "Absolutely."

Graduates, remember this – because one day you will be asked the question by your boss, “Are you sure [you want to do that]?” You’ll have to rely on all your reading, your knowledge, your experience, and your intuition before you respond. I said “Absolutely” and I was rewarded. When I received my data, there it was, a beautiful signal: the first-ever detection of rapid x-ray pulsations from a collapsed star accreting matter from a normal star like our Sun.

It was a message that had traveled thousands of light years, through space and time, to me. That discovery remains one of the highlights of my life.

You will make your own discoveries, suffer your own frustrations. Prepare for them, as best you can. UConn has already done an exemplary job of preparing you for the hard work it takes to be a discoverer, an inventor, a champion.

You are graduating at an exciting time in engineering. The field is becoming increasingly intertwined with other disciplines. STEM fields are melding together, creating a rich breeding ground for new discoveries and new inventions. The grand challenges of our time – building smarter cities, improving access to clean water, harnessing sustainable energy – will be tackled by engineers like you, working in concert with designers, social scientists or computer scientists or biologists. A team of new discoverers and inventors.

For any team, the road to success is not an easy one. From my own experiences, ones that led me to become head of NSF, I have learned this: find great people to be a part of your team, those you can depend on. Find a mentor/coach who will continue to teach you how to navigate high-risk and high-reward career plays. Find someone who will become your number one fan in your personal cheering section. And find worthy opponents – those real and abstract – who challenge you, keep you guessing, and drive your passion.

As I close my remarks I want to leave you with a quote from my virtual mentor, Einstein. … Actually, my favorite quote from him is “Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.” But that really has nothing to do with my narrative today, so, I’ll leave you with this one instead: Einstein said "I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."

I encourage you to always be passionately curious, for this leads to discovery, to invention. Know that you are in control: technology will continue to shape our lives, but you – our future engineers – can shape technology to better human life. We are counting on you!

______________________________

Dr. France A. Córdova is Director of the National Science Foundation.  These remarks were delivered to the graduates of the University of Connecticut School of Engineering at commencement ceremonies on May 7, 2016.

Dr. Córdova, was sworn in as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) on March 31, 2014. Nominated by President Barack Obama to head the $7.2-billion independent federal agency, she was confirmed by the United States Senate. Córdova is president emerita of Purdue University, where she served as president from 2007 to 2012. Previously, she led the University of California, Riverside, as chancellor and was a distinguished professor of physics and astronomy. From 1993 to 1996, Córdova served as NASA's chief scientist.

PERSPECTIVE commentaries by contributing writers appear each Sunday on Connecticut by the Numbers.

LAST WEEK: An Intervention in History

Editorial Cartoon by Bob Englehart

Noah and Sophia Were CT's Most Popular Newborn Names in 2015

Connecticut’s most frequent names for newborns in 2015 were Noah and Sophia, according to the Social Security Administration.  Nationwide, Noah topped the list for boys, but Emma was number one for girls. Among the baby girls, Connecticut’s top three names selected were Sophia, Emma and Olivia.  Nationwide, the names were the same but the order was different – Emma, Olivia and Sophia.

Among the boys, Mason was number 2 in Connecticut and number 3 nationwide. Alexander, Connecticut’s third most popular name for boys, placed eighth nationally.

In 2014, Mason and Olivia topped the list of most popular baby names in Connecticut, with Noah, Alexander, Emma and Sophia not far behind.  In 2013, Olivia again was atop the girls list, but William ranked first among the baby boys.

The source of the data is a 100 percent sample based on Social Security card application data.

The top 10 names for boys in Connecticut in 2015 were Noah, Mason, Alexander, Liam, Benjamin, Jacob, William, Michael, Logan and Matthew.  For girls, Connecticut’s top 10 were Sophia, Emma, Olivia, Isabella, Ava, Mia, Charlotte, Emily, Abigail, and Madison.

Since the beginning of this decade, as most elementary school teachers can likely attest, the most popular boys names in the U.S. are Jacob, Noah, Mason, William and Ethan; for girls, the leaders have been Sophia, Emma, Isabella, Olivia and Ava.  In the first decade of this century, the top names were Jacob, Michael, Joshua, Matthew and Daniel for boys; Emily, Madison, Emma, Olivia, and Hannah for girls.

A century ago, the list was very different.

The top girls names between 1900 and 1909 were Mary, Helen, Margaret, Anna, Ruth, Elizabeth, Dorothy, Marie, Florence, and Mildred: among the boys it was John, William, James, George, Charles, Robert, Joseph, Frank, Edward and Thomas.

CT Has Nation's 11th Lowest Adult Obesity Rate, Survey Says

One quarter of Connecticut’s adult population is obese, according to data compiled by Gallup, the 11^th lowest rate in the nation.  The state-by-state analysis indicates that at 18.5 percent, Hawaii has the lowest adult obesity rate in the U.S., closely followed by Colorado at 19.8 percent. They are the only two states in which the obesity rate is below 20 percent. On the other end of the spectrum, West Virginia has the highest adult obesity rate, at 37.0 percent. In addition to West Virginia, at least one in three adults are obese in Mississippi, Delaware, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The obesity rate exceeds 30 percent in 18 states.

Of the 18 states with obesity rates of at least 30.0 percent, all but one are located in the South or Midwest. Meanwhile, all 11 states with obesity rates below 25.0 percent are located in the Northeast or West.

These data, from daily interviews conducted January through December 2015 as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, are based on U.S. adults' self-reports of their height and weight, which are then used to calculate Body Mass Index (BMI) scores. Americans who have a BMI of 30 or higher are classified as obese.

The national obesity rate reached a new high of 28.0 percent in 2015, up significantly from 25.5 percent in 2008, when Gallup and Healthways began tracking obesity. Fourteen states had statistically significant increases in their obesity rates from 2008 to 2015, while no state registered a statistically significant decline. Maine, West Virginia, Idaho and Oklahoma experienced the sharpest upticks in obesity.

Gallup calculated the incremental cost of healthcare per year for each state by multiplying the estimated number of obese people in the state's population by the annual incremental $1,573 cost of obesity per person.

In the five most obese states, the annual incremental cost of obesity per 100,000 residents averages $54 million. By contrast, the average cost is $34 million in the five least obese states. In other words, per capita medical costs attributable to obesity are about 1.6 times higher in the five states with the highest obesity rates than in the states with the five lowest rates.  The cost in Connecticut for the obese adult population was estimated at $39 million, for the entire adult population, $1.07 billion.