What was the role of land-grant universities in creating the nation's largest youth development organization? More than a century ago, universities worked with young farmers through corn clubs to advance new technology — and those clubs are now known as 4-H. Today, Colorado State University, through its modern land-grant mission, supports Colorado 4-H in reaching around 100,000 young people across all 64 counties each year — building the next generation of leaders in communities across Colorado, rural and urban alike.

On this episode of The Next 150, that partnership comes to life as President Amy Parsons sits down with Jill Bramble, President and CEO of National 4-H Council, and Ryer Roberts, a CSU junior from Fruita, Colorado — and all three grew up in 4-H. Together they trace 4-H from its land-grant roots to 4-H's Beyond Ready, Jill's initiative to prepare 10 million young people for work, leadership, and life by 2030. They talk about why hands-on skills matter so much in the age of AI, how 4-H builds the grit and confidence that transfer to any career, and why, as Jill puts it, "we see young people as leaders today, not at some point in the future."

And, as always, both Jill and Ryer share their advice — not just for future 4-H'ers, but for every CSU student.

More about our guests ⤵️

Jill Bramble is President and CEO of National 4-H Council, the nation's largest youth development organization. A fourth-generation 4-H'er from rural Maryland, she has spent more than 18 years with the organization, starting as a grant writer before being named CEO and President in 2023. Today she leads Beyond Ready, a national initiative to prepare 10 million young people with the skills to be ready for work, leadership, and life, delivered through Cooperative Extension at land-grant universities across the country, including CSU.

Ryer Roberts is a junior from Fruita, Colorado, majoring in Agricultural Education and a highly engaged leader with deep roots in 4-H and FFA. A former officer in both organizations, Ryer has been actively involved in shooting sports and livestock programs, and served as a National 4-H Shooting Sports Ambassador. He also currently serves as Speaker of the Senate in the Associated Students of Colorado State University, the university's student government.

Key moments  ⤵️

00:00:00 - CSU welcomes Jill Bramble and Ryer Roberts
00:02:02 - Ryer's 4-H story
00:04:10 - Jill's road to CEO
00:07:11 - Land-grant roots of 4-H
00:11:41 - Hands-on skills in the age of AI
00:16:07 - Beyond the stereotypes
00:19:29 - Advice for CSU students

Helpful Links  ⤵️

Colorado State University

• All episodes
• President Amy Parsons
• CSU Extension
• College of Agricultural Sciences
• Agricultural Education
• Associated Students of CSU

About our guests

• Jill Bramble on LinkedIn
• Ryer Roberts on LinkedIn

4-H

• National 4-H Council
• Colorado 4-H
• Beyond Ready

Colorado State University is entering a new era.

In this special episode of The Next 150, guest host and STATE magazine writer Tony Phifer is joined by President Amy Parsons and CSU Director of Athletics John Weber '91 for an inside look at a significant moment in university history: CSU's move to the Pac-12.

Together, they discuss why this transition is about far more than athletics. From expanding CSU's national visibility and strengthening research partnerships to attracting future students, faculty and fans, they explore how the Pac-12 positions Colorado State for long-term success.

They also reflect on the role Fort Collins plays in the university's momentum, the economic impact of major sporting events, preserving traditions like the Border War, and how the entire Ram community can contribute to the success of this next chapter.

Whether you're a student, alum, faculty member or lifelong Rams fan, this conversation offers an exciting look at where Colorado State is headed—and why the best is still ahead.

MORE ABOUT OUR GUESTS:

John Weber:

John Weber serves as CSU's director of athletics, leading one of the nation's most ambitious athletics programs during a transformative time for CSU and collegiate sports. A proud 1991 CSU alumnus, Weber began his career in business and engineering before spending decades in the high-tech industry, including serving as president and CEO of Long Range Systems, a leading innovator in onsite wireless technology. His longstanding commitment to CSU includes service on the College of Business Global Leadership Council and founding The Green and Gold Guard, the university's NIL collective. Since becoming director of athletics, Weber has overseen record attendance, increased donor support, conference championships across multiple programs, and CSU's historic move to the Pac-12. He is passionate about creating opportunities for student-athletes and believes athletics is a powerful gateway to advancing CSU's academic mission, research excellence and national reputation.

Tony Phifer:

Tony Phifer is a former senior writer at CSU and a current writer for STATE, the premier magazine of CSU and the CSU System. He is a respected storyteller in Ram history. Before joining CSU, he spent 28 years covering Colorado State athletics for the Fort Collins Coloradoan, documenting decades of unforgettable moments, legendary coaches and championship teams. Known for his deep institutional knowledge and thoughtful storytelling, Phifer continues to preserve and share the people and moments that define CSU.

CSU's connection to the Peace Corps dates back to the agency's founding, when our faculty wrote the feasibility study that laid the groundwork for the international development program. Today, CSU continues to rank among the top Peace Corps volunteer-producing universities in the country.

On this episode of The Next 150, former Peace Corps Director and CSU Presidential Executive in Residence Carol Spahn reflects on that shared legacy and the future of service.

Carol's Peace Corps service in Romania changed the direction of her life and opened the door to a career in global public service. Years later, those same lessons helped guide her as she led the agency through its post-pandemic rebuilding.

She reflects on CSU's role in the agency's founding, the values that keep returned volunteers connected for life and why curiosity, humility and human connection sit at the heart of meaningful leadership. And as always, we close with her advice for today's CSU students.

MORE ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Carol Spahn is a former Director of the Peace Corps and was CSU's Presidential Executive in Residence for 2025–2026. Her Peace Corps journey began in 1994, when she worked as a small business development volunteer in Romania through 1996. That experience launched a career spanning international development, nonprofit leadership and public service, with roles in Malawi and across the Peace Corps' Africa region.

As director, she led the agency through a historic period of rebuilding, bringing volunteers back to service around the world after the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work reflects a deep commitment to cross-cultural partnership and the Peace Corps' mission of world peace and friendship.

During her year at CSU, she taught and mentored students, delivered the keynote at the university's Women and Philanthropy GATHER event on how service and volunteer leadership uplift women around the world, and opened The Symposium with a panel on human connection and purposeful leadership. She also serves as the Rice Family Professor of the Practice of International and Public Affairs at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs.

Recorded at Advancing Board Excellence's 2026 National Conference on Trusteeship in Denver, this episode of The Next 150 picks up where President Parsons' panel — "At the Intersection of Sports and Democracy" — left off. She's joined by three of the most influential leaders in college and Olympic sports: Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould, United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) General Counsel William King and sports executive Oliver Luck.

President Parsons and her guests get straight to why college sports matter: the communities built around them, the opportunities they create for young people and the power of sport to bring people together. The discussion traces the deep tie between college athletics and Team USA, and frames sport as one of the great democratic connectors at a time when the country needs it most. And looking ahead, they make the case that the programs that thrive won't copy one another — the winners will disrupt the status quo to build a new, sustainable model for college athletics.

The conversation also digs into the momentum behind women's athletics — from the record-setting crowd of more than 63,000 at the Denver Summit's National Women's Soccer League launch at Mile High to women claiming the majority of Team USA's medals at the Milano Cortina Winter Games — and what it will take for universities to keep investing in women's sports.

More about our guests: 

Teresa Gould is commissioner of the Pac-12 and the first woman to lead a Power Five conference. She is steering the league's transformation and relaunch, which includes building a new nine-member Pac-12 conference on its century-old foundation, and has secured its new media partnerships. Before being named commissioner, Gould served as the conference's deputy commissioner. She brings more than three decades of experience across Division I athletics, with senior leadership roles at UC Davis, UC Berkeley, the West Coast Conference and ESPN Regional Television.

William King is general counsel for the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, where he oversees legal, governance and compliance functions and serves as corporate secretary to the USOPC Board of Directors. He joined the USOPC in 2025 after a decade as Associate Commissioner for Legal Affairs and Compliance at the Southeastern Conference (SEC). Earlier, he built a national reputation in NCAA infractions and enforcement work, representing universities, coaches and athletes.

Oliver Luck serves as president of Palmetto Trust Company and chairman of Altius Sports Partners, is executive director of the United Athletic Conference, and sits on the West Virginia University Board of Governors. His earlier roles include commissioner of the XFL, executive vice president for regulatory affairs and strategic partnerships at the NCAA, and athletic director at West Virginia University, along with leadership roles in Major League Soccer and the NFL.

In this special episode of The Next 150, President Parsons and Governor Roy Romer traveled to southeastern Colorado to celebrate 100 years of the Romer family's John Deere legacy.  The trip took them to Holly, the small town where the family opened their first dealership in 1926. That single store would eventually grow into 4Rivers Equipment, whose agricultural operations are now part of 21st Century Equipment.

Gov. Romer grew up in Holly, working in the family business from a young age. Raised during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, he learned responsibility early. He tended livestock, hauled grain, and stood alongside the farmers and ranch hands who shaped his understanding of dignity and service.

Gov. Romer came to CSU and was elected student body president while on disciplinary probation for four years after a trip down to Boulder. You'll have to listen to the podcast episode for the full story. After earning his bachelor's in agricultural economics in 1950, he went on to law school at the University of Colorado, then studied ethics and divinity at Yale. He served in the U.S. Air Force as a military prosecutor in Germany. Returning to Colorado, he served in the state House and Senate, then as State Treasurer, and twelve years as Governor. He later led the Los Angeles Unified School District as superintendent.

In the episode, Gov. Romer reflects on the culture of rural Colorado and the values it gave him. He shares his perspective on the future of agriculture and water, and the divide between urban and rural America. He closes with advice for today's CSU students: hold yourself accountable, hold the people you work with accountable, and stay endlessly curious.

Set to celebrate his 98th birthday this year, Gov. Romer remains active in Colorado agriculture and optimistic as ever about the state's future.

There's no better time to celebrate two of CSU's most accomplished poets than during National Poetry Month. 

In this episode of The Next 150, President Amy Parsons sits down with University Distinguished Professor of English Camille Dungy, and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar Dan Beachy-Quick — both Guggenheim Fellows and treasured members of CSU's creative writing faculty.

Camille and Dan share the stories behind their newest poetry collections — Camille's America, A Love Story and Dan's Elements & Offerings — and each reads a poem from their new works. The conversation explores their path to poetry, what makes the art form uniquely powerful, and what CSU's Creative Writing program, now celebrating its 40th anniversary, means to the literary world. They also reflect on mentoring the next generation of poets and offer advice for students looking to find their creative voice.

More About Our Guests ⤵️

Camille Dungy is a University Distinguished Professor and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Colorado State University. She is the author of five collections of poetry, the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers, and the memoir Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden. She has won an American Book Award and received fellowship support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, which named her a Fellow in 2019. Her new collection, America, A Love Story, is an honest and compassionate examination of the mounting griefs of contemporary American life. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón says, "These new poems by Camille Dungy had me floored." 

Dan Beachy-Quick is a poet, essayist, translator, and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar at Colorado State University. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, including North True South Bright and Mulberry — a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award — and Variations on Dawn and Dusk. His newest collection, Elements & Offerings, was published by LSU Press in January 2026. His essay collection A Whaler's Dictionary is widely regarded for its literary and philosophical depth. In 2015, Beachy-Quick became the first humanities faculty member at CSU to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is also a recipient of the Monfort Professorship, the first awarded within the College of Liberal Arts, and his work has been supported by the Lannan Foundation.

The Next 150 podcast is about what's ahead — but this episode starts by looking back.

As Colorado marks 150 years of statehood, the nation approaches its 250th birthday, and CSU's Archives and Special Collections celebrates 50 years of preserving the university's history, we sat down with two people who know how CSU's history fits into that shared story better than anyone — Mark Shelstad, Head of Digital and Archive Services, and Clarissa Trapp, Instruction and Outreach Archivist, at CSU Libraries.

They provide an inside look at a collection spanning 550 archival collections, 24,000 rare books and over 150 terabytes of digital files — from a piece of cuneiform dating back to 2350 BCE, to born-digital content captured today. They share how the archives narrowly escaped the 1997 Spring Creek flood, what makes documenting a land-grant university unique, why today's students are active creators of CSU's history, and what the future of preservation looks like in an increasingly digital world.

More about our guests:

Mark Shelstad is the Head of Digital and Archive Services at CSU Libraries and an associate professor. He holds a B.A. in History from the University of Minnesota-Morris and an M.A. in Public History with a specialization in archival administration from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Mark got his start through a graduate internship at the Minnesota Historical Society and went on to work at the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center, the University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries as Head of Special Collections, and the Wyoming State Archives as Deputy State Archivist before joining CSU 11 years ago. He and his team manage CSU's institutional memory, collections relating to Colorado agriculture and water, special collections and born-digital content from across campus.

Clarissa Trapp is CSU Libraries' Instruction and Outreach Archivist and an assistant professor. She holds a B.A. from Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, and a M.L.I.S. from San Jose State University. Clarissa started her career at Living History Farms in Urbandale, Iowa, where she spent six years working at a living history museum before arriving at CSU as a graduate student in 2009 to study history. A summer job in the archives shifted her path — she joined the staff as a Digital Collections Technician in 2016, earned her library science degree during the pandemic and stepped into her current faculty role in 2024. She specializes in connecting campus and community members with archival materials and is a go-to expert on Colorado and CSU history.

Anderson Cooper with 60 Minutes visited CSU’s campus to learn more about the groundbreaking work led by Dr. Stephanie McGrath and Dr. Julie Moreno, researchers in CSU's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences working alongside aging dogs and their owners to better understand how dementia develops. At CSU, those lived experiences are fueling a first-of-its-kind effort to understand brain aging in real-world conditions in both canines and humans.

Stephanie, a veterinary neurologist directing CSU’s Brain Research Center, and Julie, a neurotoxicologist and associate director, partner with the national Dog Aging Project to follow thousands of dogs—including President Amy Parsons’ pug, El Jefe—across their lifetimes. Their Brain Health Study is revealing striking similarities between canine cognitive decline and human Alzheimer’s disease.

In this episode, they share how owner generosity, national collaboration, and cross-campus mentorship are accelerating progress toward earlier detection, better support for families with aging pets, and ultimately more effective treatments for both canine and human dementia. They also share their behind-the-camera experience with 60 Minutes, and highlight the essential role of CSU students who help drive this research through sample processing, data analysis, and hands-on lab work.

Don't miss El Jefe's special appearance in this episode, reminding us that behind every data point is a beloved family member.

Six-time Olympic gold medalist Amy Van Dyken returned to Colorado State University to be inducted into CSU Athletics’ inaugural Ring of Honor, a recognition reserved for the most influential athletes in Ram history.

While back on campus, Amy joined President Amy Parsons for a wide-ranging and deeply personal conversation about the moments that shaped her journey, from nearly quitting swimming before transferring to CSU, to finding the right coach at the right time, breaking American records, and winning Olympic gold.

She reflects on the friendships and mentors who defined her CSU years, the lessons that carried her through elite competition, and how discovering renewed purpose beyond the pool has shaped the work she’s doing today. Fresh off a cover feature in People magazine and preparing to launch her own podcast, Amy speaks about using her platform for disability advocacy and visibility.

The result is a candid, funny, and profoundly human conversation about identity, resilience, and staying true to yourself. This episode is a reminder that greatness is rarely linear, and that resilience and authenticity matter more than medals alone.

In this episode of The Next 150, President Amy Parsons sits down with CSU alumnus Norman “Norm” Harris ’99 at Spangalang Brewery in one of Denver’s most historic neighborhoods.

A second-generation Ram and fifth-generation Five Points native, Norm shares how transferring to CSU shaped his confidence and direction, and how a 20-year career at Janus led to a bold pivot toward community leadership. 

He also shares his work as executive director of the Five Points Business Improvement District and president of Denver's Juneteenth Music Festival— one of the largest in the country. 

The conversation explores revitalizing Welton Street into a “modernized cultural marketplace,” reintroducing jazz to a new generation, and collaborating with CSU's College of Health and Human Sciences' Fermentation and Food Science program to create “The Art of Darkness” stout. Norm also shares his advice for students on finding passion, building strong habits, and staying focused.