Office of the Chancellor > Speeches, Columns and Letters > Boulder Economic Council

Boulder Economic Council
January 17, 2008

It is a pleasure to have you join us this evening at the University of Colorado. It is prescient that we are holding this meeting here in the new Wolf Law Building, a facility whose construction was made possible by a new kind of partnership -- a partnership between the state, the Boulder community, the university and the students, whose self-imposed fees provided more than half the construction costs for this and three other buildings on our campus.

I want to thank Boulder Economic Council Executive Director Frances Draper and Project Manager Jennifer Pinsonneault for organizing this event. It promises to be an evening that is both educational and interesting. I'd also like to acknowledge the Vice Chair of the Boulder Economic Council, Ric Porreca, Senior Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer at CU-Boulder.

We at CU-Boulder are delighted to be a member of the Boulder Economic Council and to support the BEC. We are proud of the partnership we have with the Boulder community and thank you for your support.

Universities and their respective communities have an interesting, and some might say, co-dependent relationship – each depending upon and benefiting from the presence of the other.

I have often said that a university can be no better than the community in which it finds itself and that the City of Boulder would be a very different place if you reached in and removed 29,000 20-year-olds.

Exactly how different is apparent when you look at the impact of CU on the local economy, something I know interests this group.

This year we had 5,555 new freshmen join us. Forty percent or 2,228 new students are from out of state bringing with them new resources to the local economy.

In 2006, CU student spending in Boulder was $263 million and resulted in an estimated economic impact of more than $650 million.

In addition, in 2006, out-of-state visitors in Boulder spent nearly $56 million with an estimated economic impact of more than $105 million.

Meeting the needs and services required by our nearly 7,000 employees resulted in additional jobs in the community. CU is one of the largest employers in the City of Boulder.

In FY 06-07 start-up companies were formed based on the ideas and technologies developed by our faculty, staff and students at CU-Boulder.

And while the financial and economic impact of the university is important, perhaps more important is the impact that the university has on the energy, creativity and culture of the community.

Fifteen years ago, Richard Florida wrote a book entitled, "The Rise of the Creative Class." In it he described those things that made cities like Austin, Boston and San Francisco so vibrant and creative. Fifteen months ago he wrote an update to that book that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. In it, he identified those areas that had the greatest growth potential – a potential that is largely dependent on the education level of the region. Boulder and the Front Range were prominently identified in that article.

As a national comprehensive university, we are able to attract the best and brightest from across the country – students, faculty and staff that help to reinvigorate our community and our economy.

In an effort to ensure that we can continue to attract these quality individuals, this past year we undertook a strategic planning process – one we call Flagship 2030.

This was a massive undertaking that involved faculty, staff, students, alumni and individuals from the local community and from across the nation.

Members of the Flagship 2030 steering committee included Boulder Economic Council Chairman Chris Hazlitt, Boulder Chamber of Commerce President Susan Graff, City Manager Frank Bruno and City Council Member Suzy Ageton. Many thanks to them as we formulated what this university will look like well into this century.

Our goal was to identify the characteristics of a great national comprehensive university in the year 2030 and to define a path forward that would allow us to ensure that by then or before, we possess those characteristics.

It is an ambitious plan, one that will be difficult to achieve, but one that is worth working toward and we have already started the process of developing and implementing the results of this planning process.

This effort helped us to recognize that we need to prepare students for the global and digital economy of the 21st century. The resulting blueprint for the future proposes a mix of short and long-term plans. They include:

• A year-round academic calendar
• Moving toward an experiential and/or international experience for all of our students
• Increasing the number of our tenure-track faculty over 10 years
• Making CU and the Front Range a global crossroads
• And creating university villages

The process of putting Flagship 2030 together was very exciting for us as we culled input from the Boulder community among 16 communities across the state in designing their university – your university – for the future. Now we will be calling on Boulder leaders again as we begin to form the task forces to develop action plans to implement the initiatives.

We are lucky to enjoy many cooperative efforts with the local community in the areas of education, economic development, land use, traffic and safety.

Joint city-university discussions have produced ideas on how the East Campus and Research Park can be used more effectively to support university development while being an economic generator for the local community in such fields as: biotechnology, geosciences, space sciences and high-speed computing.

In cooperation with the city, we are working to put in an underpass at the Fiske crosswalk and another one at Broadway and Euclid Avenue near the University Memorial Center – an area that handles more bus rider traffic than the Market Street Station in Denver.

These successful working relationships also have produced synergies between the university, the city and the county as we pursue goals for the common good of the community and for society. We share a progressive philosophy on sustainable energy practices and green building codes.

Here at CU, the building you are sitting in and our new ATLAS Building down the street are the first two public buildings in the State of Colorado to achieve LEED gold certification as high performance green buildings.

We expect the new Koelbel Business Building we opened this past fall to be gold certified. The new Visual Arts Complex with ground breaking in March and completion in 2009-2010 is designed to the Leed gold standard.

The City of Boulder and the university both claim some "firsts" in the sustainable energy age. As you know, the city was first in the nation with a carbon tax. The university was first in the nation with:

• A student operated environmental center (1970)
• A student-sponsored recycling program (1976)
• A student-operated bus pass program (1991)
• Student funded wind-energy purchase (2000)
• And last spring, the first student government to commit to climate neutrality.

I mentioned that one of our roles is to serve as a resource to business, industry and society at large. The Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory is another example.

The collaboratory was formed almost a year ago by CU-Boulder, the Colorado School of Mines, CSU and NREL - the National Renewable Energy Laboratory - to develop renewable energy technologies. Already a center founded by the collaboratory has provided $500,000 in grants to 10 teams pursuing renewable energy research.

Two of the seven new start-up companies I mentioned earlier are devoted to advancing bioenergy technology. OPX Biotechnologies Inc., for example, is focused on improving the viability and cost effectiveness of biofuels.

This and many other collaborative ventures are making Boulder, Colorado, our nation and our world a better place for all people.

Introduction of Dr. Richard Wobbekind
One of the true values of any university - but certainly a national comprehensive university like CU-Boulder - is to be a convener of expertise from a wide variety of disciplines - and to be a resource to benefit business, industry and the community. The business economic outlook that you will hear tonight from Dr. Richard Wobbekind is an example of one of those benefits.

Dr. Wobbekind wears many hats at the University of Colorado. He is associate dean for MBA and Enterprise Programs at the Leeds School of Business. He also is associate professor of Business Economics and Finance -- teaching macroeconomics, public policy and entrepreneurship -- to undergraduates, MBA and executive students.

Dr. Wobbekind is Executive Director of the Business Research Division at LEEDS responsible for developing an annual consensus forecast for the Colorado economy, which you will hear tonight -- and performing economic impact assessments for Colorado.

He produces a quarterly "Business Leaders Confidence Index" for Colorado and a quarterly Economic Indicator Series for Boulder County. He is a great example of the types of partnerships that exist between CU and the larger Colorado community. Please welcome Dr. Richard Wobbekind.