David Banks '77

At CC, David majored in sociology, joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, wrote for the Nugget, was a DJ on KRCC, skied part of Pikes Peak, and captained the men’s rugby team. In 1993, 16 years after graduation, David organized the first Homecoming student vs. alumni rugby match. Now an annual event, it often includes pre-game dinners and post-game celebrations. In 2007, fellow alumni, parents, and friends created the Rugby Club Endowment, which annually helps fund the CC Rugby Club. With the rise of women’s rugby, David’s alumni adopted the guiding principle of “One club, two teams,” whereby all fundraising supports both the men’s and women’s teams. In 2017, to mark the rugby club’s 50th year, David organized a golden celebration featuring players from the very first team and the telling of the official history of rugby at Colorado College. Nominators credit David’s “infectious enthusiasm,” “wit,” “commitment,” and “selflessness,” for “almost single-handedly” maintaining rugby as a viable club sport at CC. As rugby’s “biggest cheerleader,” he has been a friend and mentor to many individual rugby players. David is credited with promoting a welcoming atmosphere, putting student desire to be part of a team and to learn and play rugby safely ahead of other considerations. We honor David for his ardent and unflagging support of rugby and the physical, mental, fun, and social benefits it offers CC students.

Ian Griffis '85

Ian is co-founder and co-CEO of Griffis Residential, a Denver-based apartment investment fund manager and property operator with approximately 8,000 units under management. Investment markets include Denver, Boulder, Seattle, Portland, Long Beach, San Diego, and Austin, Texas. Griffis has structured real estate investments for over 35 years. Investing in his first project as a Colorado College senior, he initially invested in and developed student housing. With the onset of the RTC crisis in 1989, Griffis expanded the management operation to assist owners in surviving the largest collapse of financial institutions since the Great Depression. An operations-focused investment culture remains a key factor in above benchmark returns — no investor in a Griffis project has ever lost a dollar.

Griffis, with then-partner Buck Blessing, implemented the east campus expansion in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the assemblage of 37 off-campus properties plus the Spencer Center, Wooglins building, and J’s Motel (now the Ed Robson Arena site), expanding the CC campus by approximately 15 percent.

Griffis has a strong interest in conservation, having implemented four conservation easements; the assemblage and creation of an 800-acre public park; and the preservation of an archeological site and section of the historic Cherokee Trail, for which he was awarded the Friends of The Oregon Trail Award.

Together with David Birnbaum and Tom Barta, he is a founding board member of Griffis Gives, a not-for-profit formed to address personal distress and the contributing causes to homelessness. Griffis is a former Trustee of Colorado College and the Fountain Valley School. He is a member of the Casa Serena Society as well as the William Jackson Palmer Society at Colorado College. He holds a B.A. from Colorado College.

Karen is an art historian who joined the faculty of the Allbritton Art Institute at Baylor University in 2000 and retired in 2015 after influencing many undergraduates in the classroom and on field trips abroad. She was a Boettcher Scholar at Colorado College and earned her BA magna cum laude in art, her MA in art history from Ohio State University in 1973, and a PhD in art history from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981.

In 1995, she developed Art inSight, Inc., Adventures in Art History, to share her passion for art history with adults through study tours and visits to important art sites and museums in the United States and abroad. Her publications include study guides, exhibition catalog essays, and a book, "Homage to the Creative Spirit: Paintings by Jenness Cortez." Karen has demonstrated her dedication to the college in multiple ways including representing CC at local high-school fairs, hosting dinners for newly admitted students, serving as an alumni volunteer, and serving a six year term on the board of trustees as an elected alumni trustee from 2010 to 2016. She has endowed a scholarship in art history to assist students with deep financial need so that they can have the freedom to focus on the richness of a liberal arts education, which was the opportunity she had as a CC student. Karen continues to be an advocate for the liberal arts and an ambassador for CC.

Following graduation from CC, Christine earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. She served as a college teacher and administrator before spending the last 20 years of her career as a consultant to a wide range of colleges and universities, hospitals, museums, and private schools around the country.

Schluter has served as president of the CC Alumni Association Council (formerly the Alumni Association Board), as a member of the CC Board of Trustees, and on her class reunion committees since graduation. She has also served as president of the board of her homeowners' association and as vice president of the Board of the Sanibel, Florida, League of Women Voters, and assisted various nonprofit boards with planning, board training, etc.

As president of the AAC, she worked to build the diversity of the council and increase the philanthropic support of alumni leaders. Having grown up in very rural Harlem, Georgia, she saw the effects of poverty, poor education, and racism up close. This galvanized her desire to help effect change. She has always believed that education is our best hope, and been passionate about providing educational and leadership opportunities to those who lack them, primarily poor people and people of color. Consequently, her top priority for giving to CC has always been scholarships, particularly for first-generation students and students of color.

She is the mother of two daughters, Heather and Hilary Van Ness '91, stepmother of three, and grandmother of eight.

Artie Toll Kensinger ’53 

As a student at Colorado College, Artie participated in women’s basketball, softball, swimming and diving, and tennis, and was a member of the Delta Gamma sorority.

Since she graduated, Kensinger has raised three children, volunteered widely, and remains actively involved with CC.

In addition to volunteering with numerous organizations, including the Olympic Training Center, Pikes Peak Center, and Pikes Peak Library District, she’s served on the boards of the Woman’s Educational Society, Pikes Peak YMCA, Junior League, Episcopal Thrift House, Colorado Springs Debutante Ball, Colorado Springs School, and McAllister House Museum.

She worked as director of the Annual Fund at Colorado College, and her fundraising expertise also benefited Goodwill Industries, where she established and administered a development program. She hosted an event in her home for her 64th reunion last year and served on the steering committee for her 50th reunion, which established the Class of 1953 Scholarship. As class agent she’s recruited classmates to give to CC to achieve a high percentage of donors for her class participation.

In 1992, she won seven gold medals in swimming at the Rocky Mountain Senior Games in Greeley, Colorado. At the 1993 National Senior Games in Baton Rouge, she placed silver and bronze in two of her swimming events.

Kensinger is a member of the CC President’s Council, Fifty Year Club, and the Barnes Legacy Society. She earned a bachelor of arts degree from CC in 1953.

Ray Petros' 72

Ray is a lawyer in Denver specializing in Colorado water law and related environmental and land use regulation. During his 40 years of private practice, he has assisted cities and other clients in obtaining water supplies and has defended counties in applying regulations to mitigate the impacts of large water projects. Upon graduating from the University of Colorado School of Law, Petros was appointed to a judicial clerkship with a justice on the Colorado Supreme Court. He began practice with a small natural resources law firm in Denver, and later became a partner in large national and regional law firms. In 1996, he co-founded his own firm, Petros & White, LLC. His history with Colorado College includes serving as president of the Alumni Association Board (2007-2009); trustee (2007-2011); AAB member (2001-2011); co-chair, 1874 Society (2012-2013); co-host of the Boettcher Scholars Alumni Reunion (2010) and fundraiser for the Boettcher Foundation’s Endowment for Distinctive Educational Programming; co-chair of a CC debate alumni reunion (2003) and co-founder of the Al Johnson Debate Endowment; an inaugural supporter of the Pueblo Scholars Endowment; co-chair of the Denver Alumni dinner/lecture series at the Cactus Club (early 1980s); and a member of many class reunion committees.

Jack Pottle '77

Throughout his nearly 30-year career in telecommunications and cable television, Jack has exhibited the entrepreneurial acumen for which CC alumni are renowned. He served as president/COO of Fanch Communications, a top-10 U.S. cable television company, and as CEO of FiberNet LLC, a startup that grew to become one of the mid-Atlantic region’s most successful competitive telephone companies. He is a managing director of Viridian Investment Partners, a Denver-based private equity firm focusing on telecommunications, and is on the boards of three Viridian portfolio companies. He also has served on boards including Young Americans Bank, C-SPAN, and Escuela de Guadalupe. Jack and his family have sponsored development projects in Ghana, Jordan, Kenya, and Malawi. He was on CC’s varsity cross-country and track team and won his age group at the 2013 Denver Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon. Jack has consistently supported CC, serving on the Board of Trustees, his class reunion committee, as a City Champion, and on the Denver Business and Community Alliance.