Office of the Chancellor > Speeches, Columns and Letters > New Faculty Orientation Welcome

New Faculty Orientation Welcome
August 24, 2006

Good morning - I am very pleased to be able to welcome each of you to the University of Colorado at Boulder.

CU-Boulder is a truly outstanding institution – the flagship university for the State of Colorado and one of the best comprehensive public research universities in the country. Here at Cu-Boulder, we have an excellent faculty engaged in groundbreaking research and innovative teaching, an enormously talented student body with a strong sense of social consciousness, and a beautiful campus that rivals any in the world.

As new members of the faculty, you represent the future of our university -- an investment we are pleased to make. And we are committed to your success in all that you do.

I too am new to the Boulder campus. My first day as Chancellor was July 15, and I must say that it's nice to finally be talking to a group that is newer than I.

Academically, I grew up in the Big 12, having received my BS from Kansas State and my PhD from Texas A&M, where I was on the faculty for nearly 20 years. Most recently, I served six years as Provost at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

I came to CU-Boulder because of the opportunities I saw. -- the opportunity to work at a nationally ranked university with award-winning faculty and students, and outstanding programs in the sciences, creative arts, education, humanities and social sciences.

To give you an idea of the breadth of our programs, I want to mention a few.

Our partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and JILA, our joint institute, has assembled talented faculty and students, as well as key financial resources, to create a successful culture of discovery. It's no coincidence that three of our Nobel Prize winners are JILA fellows.

The Renewable and Sustainable Energy Initiative, led by Professor Carl Koval, is positioned to lead the nation and the world in finding solutions for economically viable sources of renewable energy, and for a society and an economy that thrives on the sustainable use of energy resources.

In the humanities, we recently received a grant that will allow the Center for Asian Studies to expand language instruction in less commonly taught foreign languages. Among the languages to be added is Farsi.

And last spring, the Takács Quartet's recording of Beethoven's Late Quartets was awarded the Disc of the Year at the first BBC Music Magazine Awards, in addition to winning the Chamber Music Category. Plus the Jazz Big Band and its lead trumpeter won two more Down Beat Magazine Student Music Awards, bringing our total to 13, more than any other school in the Rocky Mountain region.

It is a tremendously exciting time to be at CU-Boulder -- in a few weeks, we will be opening the new Wolf Law Building and a month later the new ATLAS Building - a technology-enhanced teaching and learning center for the entire campus. We have started the renovation and expansion of the building that houses the Leeds School of Business and will soon start construction of the Visual Arts Complex.

These are just a few examples of our creative and innovative programs that help to confirm that you are joining a vibrant academic community. We are committed to interdisciplinary research and the sharing of ideas across academic interests. For instance:

We are building on our international reputation as a leader in the physical sciences to expand on the life sciences, particularly through the Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology. This initiative will establish Colorado and CU as pre-eminent leaders in 'systems' biology by harnessing knowledge that will help diagnose, treat, and prevent disease.

We are also building on technology at the New Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society Center, known as the ATLAS Center, which I mentioned previously. It's opening this fall and will advance pedagogy across the campus.

The Center for the Humanities and the Arts, which plays a vital role in promoting humanistic scholarship and artistic creation across the Boulder campus, has a new director, Dr. Michael Zimmerman, who's here with us today. He comes to us from Tulane University. Welcome, Michael.

And the department of East Asian Languages and Civilization has hired a new chair, Janice Brown, from the University of Alberta who is joining us in December.

Other examples of the progress we are making are apparent in our freshman class which may be the largest and best qualified in our history.

These examples of the progress we are making leave little doubt that you have chosen well and we have chosen well also, as you will help write the next chapter in the university's emergence. Our highest hopes and expectations for this institution rest with each of you.

As you get situated, you may find the need to draw upon some of the many resources available to you:

In addition to your colleagues, chairs, deans, the Office of Faculty Affairs, Provost Phil DiStefano and me, the faculty teaching excellence program and the Boulder Faculty Assembly stand ready to assist you.

As a university, we are committed to your success and to the diversity that you represent. Diversity in all its forms, ethnic, intellectual and geographic and the Office of Diversity and Equity is another great resource for any questions that you may have.

I hope you will attend my campus address on Sept. 8 at the Old Main Chapel. I'm looking forward to this opportunity to talk with faculty and staff and the entire campus community about the future of the university and my plans and vision for the university. Welcome to CU-Boulder. We're glad you're here.

G.P. "Bud" Peterson, Chancellor
University of Colorado at Boulder