Described as a professor "not easily forgotten," Barry Michrina, PhD, touched the lives of thousands of students as well as his colleagues during his tenure as professor of anthropology at Colorado Mesa University. Over the course of a 20+ year career, Michrina taught classes on Native Americans, world cultures, religion and culture and ethnographic methods. He lovingly advised the student-edited publication Vignettes from 1998-2008 and won the Distinguished Faculty Award in 1997.
One of Michrina's ethnographic foci was the Ute people, especially the Southern Ute who welcomed him to their sun dances. His Ute name described him perfectly: Standing As Tall As The Sky.
Born and raised in the coal mining region of western Pennsylvania, Michrina's work reflected his home state's heritage of mining and labor. His love for the Pittsburgh Pirates and Pittsburgh Steelers was legendary; on most days one could find him walking across the CMU campus wearing his Pirates or Steelers cap.
Michrina earned his BS in chemistry from St. Francis College (PA) in 1969 and his MS in physical chemistry from Colorado State University in 1971. He earned two doctorate degrees-a PhD in agronomy from Penn State University in 1981, and another in cultural anthropology from SUNY-Binghamton in 1991.
He authored several books, including, notably, Pennsylvania Mining Families: The Search for Dignity and the Coalfields (University of Kentucky Press, 1994) and Person to Person Fieldwork, Dialogue, and the Hermeneutic Method (State University of New York Press, 1996), written with CherylAnne Richards. Between 1995-97, he also served as the editor the Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness.