CSU professor named Colorado State Historian

DENVER — History Colorado, a division of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, has named Colorado State University history professor Jared Orsi to the role of Colorado State Historian and the leader of the State Historian’s Council.

Orsi succeeds Regis University professor Nicki Gonzales in those leadership roles.

“It is humbling to follow in the footsteps of Dr. Nicki Gonzales and the many distinguished state historians who preceded her,” Orsi said in a news release. “I look forward to working with the amazing History Colorado staff and State Historian’s Council members to tell the rich stories of our state. Colorado is a great state, but not equally for everybody. As state historian, I would like to contribute to the stories of all Coloradans being told and valued.”

In addition to his professorship at CSU, Orsi is the director of the school’s Public Lands History Center, which seeks to integrate research, education and outreach that informs and elevates resource management of public lands, the release said. 

“Dr. Orsi brings to the State Historian’s role a powerful perspective founded upon decades of research, teaching, writing and working in the field,” Jason Hanson, History Colorado’s chief creative officer and director of interpretation and research, said in the release. “His expertise in borderlands and environmental history, reckoning with both the colonial legacy and democratic potential of our public lands, exemplifies his powerful approach to Colorado’s history. His scholarship is rooted in a commitment to illuminating the histories of all who have called Colorado home as well as a compelling hope that our shared history can light the way to a brighter future. His ability to bring historical insight to pressing environmental issues in the present could not be more timely. We look forward to Dr. Orsi’s leadership in the coming year.”

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