Dennis Van Gerven

Dennis Van Gerven received his BA in Anthropology from the University of Colorado in 1968. He did his graduate work at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and received his MA in 1969 and his PhD in 1971. He has been a member of the Anthropology Department at the University of Colorado since 1974 and is currently Director of the Arts and Sciences Honors Program.

Dr. Van Gerven teaches in areas of human origins, human adaptability, skeletal biology, and quantitative methods. He is particularly committed to undergraduate teaching through his introductory courses as well as courses in the Honors Program. Dr. Van Gerven is a two-time winner of the Boulder Faculty Assembly Teaching Award, he has also won the SOAR teaching award, the Honors Program teaching award, the Excellence in Education Outstanding Professor Award, and is the 1998-99 Carnegie Foundation Colorado Teacher of the Year.

Dr. Van Gerven has published widely on aspects of health and disease in ancient populations of the Nile Valley and is known for his extensive collection of mummified human remains from Sudanese Nubia housed at the University of Colorado. He is presently continuing an extensive analysis of mummified human remains from the Medieval site of Kulubnarti. His interests include paleopathology, paleodemography, and biocultural reconstruction.

A question that Dr. Van Gerven is sometimes asked, and which he is prepared to discuss at the Café, is: Is the knowledge to be gained worth disturbing the dead? He is as interested in your opinion as you may be in his.

One of his students, trying to encapsulate Professor van Gerven's ethos, said admiringly:
“He's like Donald Duck on crack.”