The College of Health and Human Sciences Alumni Awards recognize alumni of the College who have distinguished themselves and brought honor to Colorado State University through their career achievements, community service, and volunteer efforts. Awards are presented in two categories: the CHHS Outstanding Alumna/Alumnus Award and the CHHS Emerging Leader Alumna/Alumnus Award. Emerging Leader Award honorees must have graduated from CSU within the last 10 years. The College of Health and Human Sciences presented the 2017 recipients with their awards at the Scholarship and Alumni Awards Brunch on December 9. Learn more about the award winners below.
Emerging Leader Alumnus Award
David Rout (M.S.W. social work, ’13)
David Rout serves as the executive director of the nonprofit Homeless Gear in Fort Collins. Rout joined Homeless Gear in 2012 and became executive director in 2014. Homeless Gear oversees various programs at the Murphy Center for Hope, a resource for homeless and at-risk people in Larimer County. Under Rout’s guidance Homeless Gear provides leadership, and coordination of service partners from around Northern Colorado including basic needs assistance, to employment and housing support. The work results in around 30,000 interactions with roughly 3,000 people per year. Rout also serves on the board of Outreach Fort Collins, which is a community-driven program to connect the community’s most vulnerable members to services and support. He is a member of the external Advisory Board for the School of Social Work, and works with the director and faculty to promote SSW’s focus on education, research, and outreach with real-world input on current and future trends. He also supervises and mentors social work students in their fieldwork placements with Homeless Gear.
Outstanding Alumna/Alumnus Award
Paul Goldberg (M.S. food science and nutrition, ’97)
Paul Goldberg holds a certification as a strength and conditioning specialist and is a board certified sports dietitian who works as an exercise physiologist for the U.S. Army. He currently serves as the human performance program coordinator for the 10th Special Forces Groups (Airborne) at Fort Carson, Colorado. Goldberg was integral to the joint venture between the U.S. Special Operations Command and a team of researchers headed up by Tracy Nelson and Lise Youngblade at CSU. The Preservation of the Force and Family program is based on an innovative program that Goldberg built and wanted to investigate for efficacy and impact. The program was created in 2012 by U.S. Special Operations Command to take a more holistic approach in addressing the toll that more than a decade of deployments have taken on service members and their families. Goldberg has been extremely supportive and an advocate for funding to study the program, which has been well-received by the Department of Defense and the U.S. Army. Goldberg previously served as an assistant strength coach in the CSU athletics department and served as the strength and conditioning coach for the National Hockey League, with the Colorado Avalanche, for more than 10 years.
Deirdre Sullivan (B.S. human development and family studies, ’97)
Deirdre Sullivan currently works in non-profit management and is a leader in the community. Sullivan co-founded and now directs Vida Sana, a coalition united for health equity under UC Health. Vida Sana brought in more than $1 million in direct funding to address health disparities among low-income and Hispanic/Latino community members in Larimer County. Sullivan also spearheaded the creation of the only community health worker model in Larimer County. This model has had great success in increasing community health and improving the low-income community’s access to resources to increase family health. Sullivan believes that when a community involves all voices in creating policies and systems, the entire community benefits, and in 2016 she was the featured speaker at the State Capitol’s Health Equity on the Hill event, where she advocated for increased health funding. Sullivan is an active volunteer, serving as a board member for the Center for Family Outreach, and the Executive Director for The Family Center/La Familia, where she managed a $500,000 capital campaign to purchase a facility for the center. In 2016, she was elected to the Board of the Health District of Northern Larimer County.