Making Probiotic Sodas!

Kamil Wojciak, Staff Writer

During Earth Week, students learned and created their own probiotic sodas, while gaining knowledge of the culture and history of sugar. To gain more knowledge on sugar and to create their own probiotic sodas, students went to the second floor of the Student Center at 6:00 PM on April 28th.

Starting off, there was a round of introductions. Each individual stated their name, pronouns, major, and their relationship with sugar. Asia Dorsey, one of the event’s leaders, cleansed the air with the art of smudging, and allowed others to try out her three blends of probiotic sodas. The three blends were blueberry, root beer, and plain. Also, the audience learned more about the benefits of smudging on how these burnt herbs have antimicrobial properties and how they can literally cleanse the air.

The idea of our relationship of sugar became a large topic of discussion and became the main theme of the event. Dorsey explained how the sugar we mainly consume daily, white sugar, is empty and does not par with nature itself. However, Dorsey explained how white sugar can be complete and full if it is combined with molasses. Delving back into the past, the group starts to learn about the culture and history of sugar. Specifically, the group learned that in India, people drank sugar water made with sugarcane, and it was both nutritious and beneficial. It was now understood that before the mass production and creation of white sugar, sugar was a product of nature that had beneficial properties.

After all the conversing about sugar, it was time for people to start making their own probiotic sodas!

Here are the steps they followed:

  1. Each individual grabbed their own jar that will serve as the place for primary fermentation.

  2. People personally put their saliva in their jars (this is important to designate the microbes for production).

  3. Ingredients were put in and consisted of water, sugar, lemons, dried fruit, and cultures.

  4. Now for after the event: 24 to 48 hours of time for the drink to complete a cycle.

These steps will be able to create a fresh batch of probiotic sodas, however, Dorsey taught the audience on how to continue their batch and make it thrive. Do you remember how it was discussed that sugar and molasses make a whole and how that combination has beneficial properties? Well, that is exactly how the microbes are meant to be fed! Feeding the microbes properly with this sugar/molasses combo, and proper temperature regulation, will allow anyone to create as many batches of probiotic soda they want!

This event was a good mix of being educational and entertaining, learning about the nature of sugar and the creation of probiotic sodas. While Earth week may be over, the knowledge gained and the creation of new batches of probiotic sodas will continue on!

The 2019 Regis Innovation Challenge Finals

By: Kamil Wojciak, Staff Writer

Here at Regis University, students and staff were able to promote their businesses and business ideas, and had the opportunity to receive cash prizes to help their businesses become successful. Hosted by the Innovation Center and the Anderson College of Business, the 2019 Regis Innovation Challenge Finals took place in the Mountain View Room of Claver Hall on April 12th, 7:00 PM to around 9:35 PM. This final competition had nine finalists pitching their business ideas for the prizes of $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000, to help start their business. In the words of Dr. Ken Sagendorf, the director of the Innovation Center, this competition is meant to help “solve our world’s problems, and make it better.”

These nine competitors all presented at the event, in this chronological order:

  1. MyHomeFix: an augmented-reality and educational app with the purpose of helping to do home repairs, using tutorials and step-by-step guides.

  2. Invictus Project: a mental health procedure focused on traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, depression, and more; the Invictus Project also brings a more scientific approach to mental treatment with hormone replacement, ketamine infusion, high oxygen hyperbaric therapy, and more.

  3. Instream Water: a highly convenient and affordable water refill station, helping remove plastic waste by removing the need of plastic water bottles.

  4. Brand$tanding: a card game where you pitch business ideas, also serving the purpose of educating people.

  5. Rock-n-Rides: a transportation service that goes to the Red Rocks Amphitheatre from the Denver area and vice-versa.

  6. The Nest: an empowering spiritual movement by the use of workshops and retreats.

  7. A To Z Logic: a service specializing in enterprise cyber security, intended for mid-size companies to households.

  8. PinQuest Golf: a golf training app meant to improve the short game, while being fun and competitive.

  9. CampCrate: a service that allows people to rent a box of camping equipment, and receive planning details for specific trips/adventures.

For the competition, each team had five minutes to pitch their business idea to the audience and judges. Immediately after pitching their ideas, the judges had five minutes to ask questions on the business idea. Even though the judges contributed to most of the competitors’ scores (80% of the final score), the audience was actually able to vote on the competitors themselves (20% of the final score). For the audience to vote, all they had to do was go onto a specific website, and enter the percent of favorability of each presenter; also, the total percent of favorability had to equal 100%.

With all the voting and scoring provided by the judges and audience, they were able to announce the competitors that will receive the cash prizes. The three competitors announced were MyHomeFix, Invictus, and CampCrate. All three competitors on the stage waited to hear what prize they were going to get. Then, they announced the prizes to each of the competitors. The competitor that received the $1,000 prize was Invictus, the competitor that received the $5,000 prize was MyHomeFix, and last but not least, CampCrate received the $10,000 prize.

While the competitors and some audience members may have seen the event as serious, it was highly educational and entertaining to see the innovative concepts displayed on that stage that night. If you have missed this event, I highly recommend you go to the final event of the 2020 Innovation Challenge on April 17th, 2020!



Dancing at the Silent Disco!

By: Kamil Wojciak, Staff Writer

On April 11th, people were dancing and having great amounts of fun at the silent disco here at Regis. Regarding location and time, this silent disco took place in the Mountain View Room in Claver Hall at 7:00 PM, all the way to roughly 10:00 PM.

As already implied in its name, this disco was silent (other than the people who were singing the lyrics) by having each audience member listen to the music through headphones. These headphones were the key element to this silent disco, as they allowed you to connect to any of the three DJs at the event. To connect to the specific DJ you wanted to, you would move the switch located on the back of the left ear pad; this switch had three options, correlating to the amount of DJs that you could listen to. On the back of the right ear pad, there was a knob that changed the volume of the headset.

Each channel for the DJs had a color associated with it to indicate which DJ is playing on the channel the audience members were listening to. To figure out the channel you were listening to, you just had to look at the your headset’s ear pads. Each headset displayed red, blue, or green, depending on the channel you listened to; the color displayed on your headset correlated to the DJ you were listening to, as the DJ had the same color headset as yours.

As there were three DJs that you could listen to, the audience had different musical preferences to choose from. The red DJ mainly focused on modern pop and hip-hop, using songs like “It’s Tricky” by RUN-D.M.C and “24K Magic” by Bruno Mars. The green DJ had a broad range of EDM and dubstep songs and also some hip-hop songs like “Rockstar” by Post Malone. The blue DJ had music that I would as “chill vibes” like “Africa” by Toto and “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. Also, while people were jamming to the music provided, there was a machine with a camera and screen that people could use to take pictures. To receive the pictures that were taken, they only had to enter their email address and the photos would be sent to that email.

Overall, the silent disco was a blast of an event, and will be highly cherished by many of the participants. It is of great thanks to RUSGA, for planning the events of Ranger Week, and SoundDown Party, for providing the silent disco service.



Celebrating Earth Day at Regis!

By: Kamil Wojciak, Staff Reporter

At the beach here at Regis University, people were making tie-dye shirts, taking care of succulents, eating snacks and much more! Specifically, all of these activities took place during the Earth Day event on April 3rd, 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM.

Earth Day, a day that is celebrated internationally on April 22nd, is meant to give recognition to environmental issues that impact our planet and how to protect our environment. Founded in 1970 to originally teach people about these environmental issues, it has now become a staple holiday around the world.

While our Earth Day event at Regis was not one that helped resolve any environmental issues in our community, it allowed students to enjoy being outside in the sunny environment and to participate in multiple activities of their choice. The two main attractions were the tie-dye shirts and the succulents.

For making their own personal tie-dye shirts, the participants were given a white shirt and many materials to help aid their creative process. Firstly, students clumped up their shirts into a spherical shape, and used rubber bands to keep that shape formed. Then, the students were appropriately able to start tie-dying their shirts with the large variety of colored inks to choose from. When they were satisfied with their tie-dye shirt, they were given a Ziploc bag to safely store and keep their new personalized shirt.

While many participants made tie-dye shirts, the succulents also were high in popularity; as there was a limited amount of succulents, only the earlier guests were able to participate in this activity. With each individual having their own succulent, they had the opportunity to paint their pot for the succulent that they are going to plant in that pot. Like the tie-dye shirts, there was a large variety of paints that the artist could use, but no paint brushes in the vicinity. To solve the lack of paint brushes, finger painting was used and allowed great fun for this activity.

The Earth Day event at Regis was a great way to enjoy the sunny spring weather outside that was somewhat lacking by the recent weather we were having, and was also a fun way to express our artistic sense within us.