Upcoming Events

2023 Annual Meeting

Annual Meeting, Lunch, and Speaker — Saturday, October 21, 2023, at the Denver Athletic Club

The Alpha Association’s annual meeting and lunch will be Saturday, October 21, 2023, at the Denver Athletic Club, 1325 Glenarm Pl., Denver 80204.

A short business meeting to review the past year and to elect officers for the coming year will begin at 11:30 a.m. After lunch Alpha Association member Valerie Neal will begin her talk.

The lunch will be an Italian buffet and will cost $35. Parking for this event at Denver Athletic Club will be $7. As always, guests are welcome!

If you plan to attend, please return the reservation form along with a check for your lunch to the address on the form, or pay online through PayPal (treasurer@pbkcolorado.org). Reservations must be received by Monday, October 16, 2023. If you make a reservation but cannot attend, send an email to board@pbkcolorado.org to notify us. After October 16 we will not be able to refund the lunch cost because we are guaranteeing the number of guests.


“Perspectives on Women Astronauts” by Dr. Valerie Neal, Former Curator of Human Spaceflight, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Through no fault of her own, Sally Ride’s fame has eclipsed public awareness of other women in America’s astronaut corps. Ineligible to become astronauts until 20 years after men were chosen for the job, women have lived and worked as equals in space during the past 45 years. Each one of them is quite accomplished and worthy of recog­ni­tion. Many have formidable resumes and have set records as the first or only women to achieve various pro­fessional milestones. They are engineers, scientists, pilots, military officers, and leaders. They are also wives, mothers, grandmothers, divorcees, widows, and singles. Unsurprisingly, they are highly motivated, intelligent, quick to learn, and driven to excel. Fifteen of them are members of Phi Beta Kappa or Sigma Xi. Gaining perspective on these women helps us understand how NASA and society have evolved since the Space Age began to the point that women’s place is now in space.

Alpha Association member Valerie Neal, Ph.D., retired from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum after 30 years as a space history curator involved in research, writing, collecting artifacts, devel­oping exhibits and public programs, and public service. Her portfolio was human spaceflight in the Space Shuttle and International Space Station eras. Before that, she worked with NASA for 10 years as a writer and editor for space mission publications. She was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa in 1971, the year of the chapter’s installation at Texas Christian University.

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Past Events

2023 Denver Key Connections Event

The Alpha Association’s Key Connections event for this year was Thursday, September 21, 2023, at Bar Max, 2412 E. Colfax Ave., which is owned by fellow PBK member Marshall Smith.

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July 2023 Book Club Discussion

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray.

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2023 Summer Picnic

Summer picnic at Observatory Park.

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June 2023 Book Club

It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs by Mary Louise Kelly. 
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May 2023 Book Club Discussion

On May 23, 2023, book club members discussed You Are Not Expected to Understand This: How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World,
by Torie Bosch (Editor), Kelly Chudler (Illustrator).
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Spring Lunch--April 29, 2023

Alpha Association members and their guests enjoyed lunch at the Denver Athletic Club, with a talk by Andy Dunning, who has a Ph.D. in philosophy and ethics.

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Jan 2023, Key Connections / Young Professionals

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Dec. 13, 2022, Book Club

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Key Connections 2022

The Alpha Association’s Key Connections event for 2022 was at the Bierstadt Lagerhaus Bierhalle

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2022 Annual Meeting

The Alpha Association’s 2022 annual meeting to review the past year’s events and to elect officers for the coming year was held at the University of Denver’s Community Commons, Fourth Floor West room. After lunch DU Professor of  Musicology, Jack Sheinbaum, spoke about Good Music: What It Is and Who Gets to Decide, his book that was published in 2019 by the University of Chicago Press.

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