CHAPTER 5: Accomplishment of Purposes

Outreach and Service

Background

The mission of the University of Colorado at Boulder includes a specific commitment to providing service to the public. That commitment is met in a number of ways. For example, faculty members participate in extensive committee work and contribute to professional organizations in their disciplines. In order to achieve tenure, faculty members must demonstrate meritorious performance in service, such as:

• Service to the institution, e.g., serving on a tenure and review committee, the program evaluation panel, or other work at the departmental, collegiate or university level;

• Professional service in their discipline, e.g., reviewing articles for journals, doing peer reviews, serving in professional societies, providing professional expertise to a business;

• Service to the public, e.g., giving workshops or presentations to high schools, clubs, or organizations.

For purposes of tenure and promotional decisions, faculty members are expected to devote 20 percent of their workload to service, as defined above. Staff, faculty, and administrators also become involved in the campus’s service mission through a variety of community outreach programs, some of which are described below.

Outreach Programs

Campuswide outreach efforts are coordinated through the Office of Community Relations, which acts as a clearinghouse for campus outreach and service activities and works to improve the campus's relationships with communities across Colorado. Community relations staff members also serve as liaisons between the campus's outreach programs and the communities they serve, enhancing their efforts and helping to establish the trust and long-term relationships necessary for effective programs.

The Office of Community Relations works closely with the Division of Continuing Education in supporting and enhancing campus outreach efforts. The division encourages CU-Boulder faculty, staff, and students to extend their expertise, talent, and programs to diverse constituencies throughout Colorado by providing funds to support off-campus presentations, performances, exhibitions, and to bring groups from around the state to the Boulder campus.

Continuing education helped develop a strategic plan for campus outreach, in which an outreach committee helps administer a designated budget while integrating outreach activities with the university’s academic, research, and service mission. Under this plan, faculty, staff, and students are eligible to apply for grants to conduct outreach programs. A total of $250,000 was contributed in FY 1998-99 through continuing education, the chancellor’s office, and academic affairs toward campus outreach efforts. A copy of the strategic plan for campus outreach is provided at www.colorado.edu/Community
Relations/proposal.html

Outreach programs on the Boulder campus come in all shapes and sizes, a selection as diverse as the subjects taught at CU-Boulder. Activities include educational programs, service learning, technology transfer/sharing, and community service. Programs range from groups of faculty members working with Colorado high school teachers to doctoral students establishing monthly philosophy programs for senior citizens. The School of Education, for example, brought its secondary licensure program to Colorado’s Roaring Fork Valley, 160 miles west of Denver. The valley’s four communities and two school districts are sites for secondary teacher candidates to engage in course work, school and community partnerships, service learning, and student teaching.

Another example is the program of outreach activities offered by the Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory (ITLL) in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. Supported by a five-year "Program of Excellence" grant from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, the ITLL offers a wide range of hands-on workshops for K-12 students and teachers each summer, including specialized programs to encourage minority students and young women to enter the fields of math, science, and engineering. ITLL also received funding from the National Science Foundation to place more than a dozen graduate engineering students in elementary, middle, and high schools to help teachers integrate hands-on learning activities in their classrooms.

Historically, CU staff, faculty, and students have demonstrated a strong commitment to outreach activities. For example, the Science Discovery outreach program, now in its 15th year, conducted more than 1,000 workshops and camps for 40,000 K-12 students and 2,000 teachers in 1998. The Boulder campus ranks second in the nation among universities for providing Peace Corps volunteers. Fiske Planetarium hosts approximately 20,000 school children and 7,000 adults each year for star shows and other astronomy-related events. CU This Summer, now in its 11th year of bringing interdisciplinary arts programs to Colorado towns, has served 68 communities and an estimated 360,000 people.

Listed below are additional examples of CU-Boulder service to the community and state. Many of the campus’s outreach programs have broadened their reach through the World Wide Web.

Examples of campus-based programs include:

• Concerts

• The Conference on World Affairs

• The CU Wizard Program

• Fiske Planetarium

• University Libraries

• Museums and Galleries

• Science Discovery

• Colorado Shakespeare Festival

• Sommers-Bausch Observatory

Examples of community-oriented programs are:

• Chancellor’s Community Lecture Series: Founded in fall 1998, this ongoing series is co-sponsored by CU, the Boulder Chamber of Commerce, and the Boulder Public Library. Topics have ranged from "High Impact Hiring" to grant writing workshops and Willie Hill’s jazz quintet.

• Campus Garden Project: With Boulder’s Community Food Share, a garden was planted by volunteers to grow vegetables on campus for local needy families.

• I Have A Dream Foundation: A campus committee works with the local foundation to bring "Dreamers" onto campus and involve them in performances, special activities and workshops.

• Toys for Tots: More than 1,200 toys for needy children were collected through departmental drives and at basketball games.

• Dessert Drive: Campus volunteers worked with the Emergency Family Assistance (EFAA) of Boulder to collect donated dessert items at three CU basketball games.

Statewide outreach activities include:

• Philosophy Outreach Program of Colorado in Montrose

• Partners in Business: A monthly strategy series for the Western Slope

• Violence Prevention Western Slope Conference

• CU Wizards Road Show

• Center of the American West: Urban/Rural Mock Divorce Trial

• Colorado Shakespeare Festival K-12 outreach programs in Montrose and Olathe

• Interdisciplinary arts programs to Aspen, Carbondale, Cortez, Durango, Frisco, Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, Grand Lake, and Montrose

Service Learning

The service-learning concept has become an increasing part of CU-Boulder’s undergraduate education and outreach effort. Service-learning experiences are reciprocally beneficial for both the community and students. For many community organizations, students augment service delivery, meet crucial human needs, and provide a basis for future citizen support. For students, community service is an opportunity to enrich and apply classroom knowledge; explore careers or majors; develop civic and cultural literacy; improve citizenship; develop occupational skills; and foster a concern for social problems.

At CU-Boulder, the Office of Service Learning helps students and faculty develop strong educational efforts in service learning. Actual courses in service learning can be found at csf.colorado.edu/sl/cu/courses.html.

Students are further encouraged to serve through the Volunteer Clearing House, which works with more than 200 agencies located on and off campus. Students are placed in a variety of volunteer settings, including governmental agencies, child-care facilities, and environmental programs.

Continuing Education

In addition to supporting CU-Boulder’s outreach efforts, the Division of Continuing Education plays an important role in the campus’s learning environment. The aim of the self-funded division is to extend the university’s educational resources in providing quality, innovative lifelong learning opportunities to a diverse student population.

For more than 85 years, continuing education has broadened citizen access to CU-Boulder in a variety of ways. Currently, the division offers 11 credit and noncredit programs, such as Summer Session, Boulder Evening Program, Independent Study, International English, and Real Estate and Appraisal Program. In addition, graduate-level engineering courses are offered to more than 250 job sites through the College of Engineering and Applied Science via distance learning. Indeed, the division has collaborated with schools and colleges to develop 25 online courses and is working with the ATLAS program to create evaluation tools for these online courses. More information on continuing education is available at www.colorado.edu/conted.

Conference on World Affairs

In 1948, the University of Colorado at Boulder created the Conference on World Affairs (CWA), a unique vehicle for stimulating intellectual discussion both for the campus and the community at large. In contrast with conventional academic conferences that emphasize use of prepared papers on highly focused topics, CWA's participants are challenged to discuss a wide range of issues on an impromptu basis.

Described as "mental gymnastics" by past participants, CWA's interdisciplinary focus encourages creative debate from a variety of viewpoints. Past participants have included Eleanor Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger, Ralph Nader, R. Buckminster Fuller, Roger Ebert, Howard Nemerov, Yitzhak Rabin, Ted Turner, Dave Grusin, and other distinguished scholars, pundits, musicians, poets, politicians, and intellectuals.

Audiences at the conference range from an intimate dozen to well over 1,000, comprised of students, faculty, townspeople, and visitors from around the world. All events are free and open to the public. Students form the backbone of the conference experience, working to plan the topics to be addressed, serving as liaisons between the university and the participants, and interacting with some of the most invigorating personalities in the world. The conference continues to add a unique and incomparable facet to the educational environment at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Artist Series Draws Top Performers

The CU-Boulder Artist Series features a wide array of internationally known performing artists, from the hot sounds of jazz, to the rhythms of world music and dance, to the finest of the classical repertoire. Among recent performers are Branford Marsalis, Pinchas Zukerman, Yo-Yo Ma, and Ballet Hispanico.

Fiske Planetarium Accesses the Stars

Thousands of students and visitors have been introduced to the stars through Fiske Planetarium, one of the finest planetariums in the world. Its star theatre, which seats 210 people, is the largest such facility between Chicago and Las Angeles. With a Zeiss Model VI star-projector and an automated projection control system that operates hundreds of projectors, it has the capacity to present more than a dozen prerecorded star shows at any given time.

In addition to serving as a teaching facility for astronomy and other classes, the planetarium is used for star talks, star shows, laser shows, and space science presentations to school children and the general public.

Independent Studies Expand Learning Flexibility

Independent study opportunities help nurture a tutorial relationship between student and instructor through correspondence, individualized instruction, and applied music programs. Administered by the Division of Continuing Education, the Independent Study Programs offer about 85 credit courses in 15 disciplines, as well as 58 high school noncredit courses, two real estate noncredit courses, and 22 courses via the Internet. With an annual enrollment of more than 1,800, the program provides for self-paced learning at times convenient to the student.

Summer Session Extends Campus Resources

About 6,000 students take advantage of the Summer Session, which offers more than 500 courses in a relaxed, comfortable learning environment. Many students enroll in Summer Session to accelerate their academic progress. Also, the program attracts students visiting from other colleges, teachers, high school students, and others interested in pursuing their professional development or enrichment. In addition, a five-week residential program for high school students is available, featuring both credit and noncredit courses.