Jared Orsi is professor of history at Colorado State University, specializing in western US, Colorado, borderlands, and environmental history. A graduate of the University of California at Davis, he holds an MA from Northwestern University and a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At CSU he teaches US and Mexican history and serves as director of CSU's Public Lands History Center, designated in 2016 as one of CSU's Programs of Research and Scholarly Excellence. In 2003 he won the College of Liberal Arts's Excellence in Teaching Award and in 2012 the CSU Alumni Association's Best Teacher Award. In 2017, he won the college's Ann Gill Excellence in Teaching Award and in 2019 was named one of the college's two Professor Laureates.  Jared served as the State Historian for the state of Colorado  in 2022-2023.  He is the author of the prize-winning Hazardous Metropolis: Flooding and Urban Ecology in Los Angeles (University of California Press 2004) and Citizen Explorer: The Life of Zebulon Pike (Oxford 2014), as well as numerous articles and book chapters. In 2008-2009 he was the Ray Allen Billington Distinguished Visiting Professor at Occidental College and the Huntington Library.  His most recent book is Peoples of a Sonoran Desert Oasis: Recovering the Lost History and Culture of Quitobaquito (University of Oklahoma 2023).  When he's not teaching or writing, you can probably find Jared running, listening to baseball games, or enjoying the company of his partner Becky.