Office of the Chancellor > Speeches, Columns and Letters > In the right place at the best time

In the right place at the best time
June 2007 Coloradan

Bud and Val Peterson

It’s hard to believe the 2006-07 academic year is already over. For Val, my wife, and me it still feels like September — all new, as each day we meet new alums. Everywhere we go, people express support for the positive things happening on campus. It’s easy to understand why this has indeed been a transformative year.

This past fall, we enrolled one of the largest, best qualified and most diverse classes in CU-Boulder history and the incoming class will likely surpass the past one in all three areas.

Under the leadership of more than 60 internal and external stakeholders, we launched Flagship 2030, our strategic planning process, with the goal of identifying the characteristics that will define a great university in 2030 and setting forth an action plan that will take us there.

There are many other examples of progress:

• Record fundraising
• Newly created tenure faculty positions
• Increases in unit operating funds
• Stronger support from the state legislature and the Department of Higher Education
• A renewed commitment to diversity
• A significantly strengthened focus on communications
• Continued progress in incorporating athletics into the fabric of the university
• A stronger working relationship with the Boulder community

With these achievements as a backdrop, our university will strengthen its position as one of the finest national, comprehensive research universities in the country and the resource for both the public and private sectors across the Rocky Mountain region.

As that era begins, I continue to be awestruck by the unique character of our campus community. I have seen it revealed in a thousand faces and myriad ways — at a ceremony in January honoring past and present CU participants in the Peace Corps; in the innovative people of our CU LEAD Alliance, who have wedded diversity, community and academic achievement into a model for universities everywhere; in the commitment of our faculty to excellence in teaching and research and their willingness to engage in meaningful discussions about tenure reform; in our outstanding staff who provide the energy and impetus to help propel the university forward; and daily, in the faces of our students, who come to us from all over the world in order to find the means to change it.

All we have accomplished has challenged me, but it has also convinced me that I am in the right place at the best possible time.

Chancellor Bud Peterson joined CU-Boulder on July 15, 2006. He and his wife Val live in the University Residence near Williams Village and have four grown children. You may contact the chancellor at chanchat@colorado.edu.