Curious About Your Classmates? Five CSU Students Share Their Stories
When asked if they care about “history,” most Americans say no. But if you ask them the same question about their families and pasts, the answer is an overwhelming yes.
Students from all over the United States attend Colorado State University. Some of them have brought their pasts with them — and others are leaving them behind. Either way, their personal threads have become part of the tapestry of CSU. Here are five of those threads.
1. Ariel Robinhold
Ariel Robinhold is a transfer student from Western Washington University, currently in her second semester at Colorado State University. During our conversation, she shared the details of how her grandfather designed rockets during the Space Race. Her biggest takeaway? How hard it must have been for her grandmother to hold down a full-time job and raise two daughters while her husband worked long hours and slept at the office.
Robinhold is double-majoring in German and Anthropology, which she credits to her family’s German heritage and her desire to understand why people do what they do. She recommended a recent exhibit at the Boulder Public Library, called To Have and To Hoard: Joel Haertlin’s Exhibition, as an interesting example of how people’s passions shape their lives.
2. Justin Barry
Justin Barry is a non-traditional student at CSU, originally from St. Louis, MO. He and his mother share an interest in their family histories. Barry told me the story of an ancestor who arrived from England during the Civil War and spent time fighting on both sides before becoming a railway worker. According to Barry’s great-grandmother, Barry’s ancestor can be seen in the first picture of Promontory Point’s famous golden railroad spike.
Barry described himself as an avid enjoyer of historical sites and museums, although he shared his thoughts that some of the heritage sites in the South need to be overhauled to avoid whitewashing the area’s divisive history. After his graduation in 2024, he plans to work in the museum field.
3. Rebecca Evans
Rebecca Evans is an employee and master’s student at CSU. She moved from Savannah, GA to take a job in the theater department. She’s currently getting a degree in Fashion and Merchandising, which she intends to use in the museum field. Evans said that she was lucky enough to spend time three great-grandparents during her teen years, although they didn’t share much about their younger lives. But according to Evans’ mother, one of their distant relatives signed the Declaration of Independence.
Evans would like to learn more about her family history. She likes history in general. During our conversation, she described childhood visits to museums and heritage sites as “some of my favorite times.” One of her strongest memories is of a trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum when she was 13. She hopes to recreate those vivid experiences for other museum visitors in the future.
4. Elliana Gonzales
Elliana Gonzales moved up from Pueblo, CO to attend CSU in 2021. In spite of a language barrier between Gonzales and some of her relatives, she still spends a lot of time with her family. Her grandmother, who’s from Spain, doesn’t like to tell stories about her younger life — after a painful divorce, she put her past behind her.
Like her grandmother, Gonzales focuses on the future. The only visit to a historical site that she remembers was an elementary school trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The highlight of her trip was convincing her mother to go home early. Gonzales will graduate at the end of this semester. She can’t wait.
5. Melodi Harris
Melodi Harris got an associate’s degree in Centennial, CO, her hometown. This is her first year at CSU, and she’s already decided that she wants to use her Zoology degree to work with elephants at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. She’s not as sure about her family history. She shared her struggles with her adoptive mother and the tenuous new relationship she’s building with her biological mother.
Harris sees her background as an opportunity to get out and move forward. She said she’s learning from the past. She takes the same approach to larger historical topics. “Museums are a good place to see how our knowledge is growing,” said Harris. She continued, “As a species, we don’t let things keep us down very long. If we could focus on that instead of what makes us different, the world would be better.”
