Thanks to the efforts of Sarah’s family and over 1,500 generous contributors, we met our first funding goal in Spring 2023 and created an endowment that supports a CU Boulder graduate student each summer. To date, three CU Boulder graduate students have been named as recipients: Sara Padula, Katie Gannon, and Juliana Ruef. 

In the Summer of 2023, Sara Padula collected data on black-capped chickadees, and mountain chickadees in Boulder County, from the foothills to the alpine. Her project compared the spatial memories between the two species and searched for links between memory and genetic makeup. 

In the Summer of 2024, Katie Gannon investigated greenhouse gas emissions from seasonally ice-covered lakes. She installed sensors in five lakes in the Green Lakes Valley (11,500 ft) to measure carbon dioxide and methane concentrations under the winter ice. 

In the summer of 2025, Juliana Ruef split her time between the Juneau Icefield in Alaska and the Imogene Rock Glacier in Ouray, Colorado. Her field work provided ample data to explore questions about how glaciers evolve and persist.

For over a decade, Sarah was a force in the Earth science world. She was a creative, innovative, communicative, cross-disciplinary scientist who inspired the community to be more inclusive and forward-thinking. Please help us reach our goal of expanding and sustaining the Graduate Research Fellowship in her name.