President Obama visits Buckley Air Force Base for an energy talk.

Highlighting key concepts of his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday January 24th, 2012 President Barack Obama came to Colorado's Buckley Air Force Base as part of a five-state tour. President Barack Obama briefly stopped at Aurora’s Buckley Air Force Base on Thursday January 26, 2012 to promote his concept of an “all of the above” energy strategy. The White House emphasized their push for clean-energy use on military bases and public facilities by choosing the Buckley Air Force Base as their location for the energy talk.

“Last year we relied less on foreign oil than any time in the past 16 years,” he said while speaking at a Buckley hangar. “But we’ve got to do more, because even if we tapped every drop of domestic oil, we’ve only got 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves,” the president added. “We’ve got to have an all-out, all-of-the above strategy, develop every available source of America energy, and it’s got to be a strategy that is cleaner and cheaper and will create all kinds of new jobs.”

Father Alphonsus Ihuoma, December 2011 LLM Graduate, Visits Sturm College of Law

It was a great pleasure to welcome Alphonsus Ihuoma, a Sturm College of Law LLM graduate of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law & Policy (ENRL) program back to Denver recently.

Alphonsus Ihuoma, who hails from Nigeria and is a Nigerian trained barrister, is also a Catholic priest. During his time in the ENRL program, Father Ihuoma served as pastor of the Our Lady of Guadalupe St. Patrick Parish in La Junta, Colorado, which is about 100 miles southeast of Denver. Father Ihuoma continues as pastor there.

Father Ihuoma is an inspiration to all who care about the fair and responsible development of natural resources that respects the environment and, perhaps most importantly, the rights of the communities in which this development takes place. On one hand, he is a religious leader, but on the other he is also a keen legal thinker. It seems likely that his future will include the combination of these two passions, a development that will surely benefit all those in whom the Father comes in contact.

Godspeed to the good Father.

Don C. Smith
Director
Environmental and Natural Resources Law

Editor's note: In picture above, Lucy Daberkow is on far left, Father Ihuoma is in center, and Don Smith is on right.

Becky Bye, 2005 Denver Law JD Graduate, Selected by American Inns of Court for Prestigous Pegasus Scholar Award

Becky Bye, a JD graduate of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, has been selected by the American Inns of Court to be a 2012 Pegasus Scholar.

The prestigious award, which was received by only one other American lawyer, will allow Ms. Bye to practice law this spring in a U.K. barrister's office. Pegasus Scholars spend the majority of their time in barristers' chambers and observe trials or arguments in action.

Activities include opportunities to observe proceedings of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, the Privy Council, the Old Bailey, the Royal Courts of Justice and Magistrates' Courts, followed by a discussion of the proceedings with the Justice, Judge or Magistrate as the case may be.

While a student at Denver Law, Ms. Bye focused on environmental and natural resources law. Currently she is an attorney with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in Golden, Colorado. Before joining the Department of Energy, Ms. Bye served as an assistant attorney general in the Colorado Office of the Attorney General. She practiced law with Holland & Hart in Denver before moving to the public sector.

Ms. Bye was articles editor for the University of Denver Water Law Review.