Office of the Chancellor > Speeches, Columns and Letters > Chancellor's 2007 Annual Donor Dinner

Chancellor's 2007 Annual Donor Dinner
Sept. 27, 2007

Good evening. I am honored to be here tonight to celebrate something very special with you - your generous gifts to the University of Colorado which led to our record-breaking fund-raising year.

Please join me in welcoming seven members of the President's Leadership Class. This is an elite group of some of our very finest Boulder campus undergraduates and future leaders of our state and our country!

We also are privileged to have with us a very special guest, Professor Marvin Caruthers, who 16 days ago gave the university $20 million in support of the new Jennie Smoly Caruthers biotechnology building in honor of his late wife who was also a member of our faculty.

This new interdisciplinary biotechnology and biomedical research laboratory on Boulder's East Campus will revolutionize biotechnology and biomedical research.

Dr. Caruthers' gift is one of the largest in the history of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the largest ever by a faculty member.

The 260,000 square-foot building will host 60 faculty and more than 600 researchers from a wide variety of science, engineering and medical disciplines to collaborate on biomedical solutions. It is an investment in CU-Boulder's future and it heralds a new era of collaborative research that will transform our campus and the field of biotechnology.

Dr. Caruthers' generous gift is the linchpin for construction of the $115- million building that we plan to open in 2010. We are asking the Legislature for $25 million in support of this facility and also continuing our appeal to donors and philanthropic organizations to help us make this building a priority for our state and for the campus.

Thank you Professor Caruthers for your leadership in this effort.

Fund-raising records
We're here tonight to honor all of you and everything you do to make the University of Colorado great through your time and gifts.

We also have something else extremely important to celebrate. You opened your hearts and pocketbooks to the University of Colorado and gave a record-breaking $125 million to the university's three campuses in fiscal 2007, topping last year's total by 76 percent. That's $32 million more than our previous best fund-raising year in 2000.

At CU-Boulder we also reached an all-time high this past year - $44.5 million in fundraising - a 40 percent increase over last year.

Your generous giving demonstrates - to the CU community, to all our constituents, indeed to the entire State of Colorado and the nation - a continuing and growing public confidence in CU.

In more good news, we learned last month the CU Foundation has been nominated as a finalist for "Large Nonprofit of the Year," in 2007 by "Foundation and Endowment Money Management" magazine. The endowment's investment return was 22.68 percent during the last fiscal year adding more than $140 million to the total value of the portfolio and ranking the CU Foundation ahead of 98 percent of its peers for the one-year period ending June 30.

Please join me in congratulating the Foundation, Foundation Board Chairman Glenn Porzak, Foundation President Wayne Hutchens, Chief Investment Officer Chris Bittman, and all foundation employees. Between their work and your generosity, it's been an amazing year.

Research awards
And we have even more good news.
CU-Boulder set a record for the amount we received in sponsored research - $266.2 million in fiscal 2007 - the highest total in our history. This places us sixth in the nation among public universities in federal research funding. This is a credit to our outstanding faculty and continues our legacy as one of the top research institutions in the nation. Just last month we signed a $92 million contract with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA to build a satellite instrument to help forecast solar disturbances that affect communication and navigation operations around the globe.

Enrollment highlights
So it is with the backdrop of this exceptional news that we welcomed 28,988 students to campus on Aug. 20 including 5,555 new freshmen that make up one of the largest, best qualified and most diverse classes in our history! The average grade-point average of the incoming class is 3.56. Last year we had our most diverse freshman class ever. This year, we matched that with 871 students of color - 16 percent of the class.

This freshman class also set an all-time record for the number of Colorado residents – 3,327 – 60 percent of the class – reconfirming our accessibility to Colorado students.

These dramatic figures follow a two-year increase in freshman applications of 16 percent.

Campus safety
Safety is paramount for those nearly 29,000 students who come to CU for academic inquiry. So we have launched a new wireless text messaging service for campus-wide alerts to student mobile phones inspired by the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Already more than 10,000 people have subscribed to the alert system. The University of Colorado at Boulder is among the first in our state to employ this technology for the safety of our students and we have become a national leader in this area of safety.

New buildings
We have a number of new and wonderful facilities on campus thanks to the support of our benefactors, students and the legislature including the Wolf Law Building, the ATLAS Building and the newly renovated and greatly expanded Koelbel Building, which houses the Leeds School of Business. Construction of a Visual Arts Complex will begin soon as will the Center for Community that will have unified dining facilities and consolidate student services in a central location.

Rankings
The University of Colorado at Boulder was ranked 35th among the nation's public doctoral universities in the U.S. News & World Report's undergraduate rankings and tied for 79th among all doctoral universities – public and private. The College of Engineering and Applied Science was tied for 19th among public universities and the Leeds School of Business was tied for 24th. I should note Engineering and Business were the only academic programs ranked by U.S. News in its 2008 edition.

Flagship 2030
We've titled this evening "Flagship 2030" after our year-long strategic planning process centered around public input that we began last fall. It's been an invigorating experience looking ahead to the year 2030 to expand our thinking about the university's future while engaging the citizens of Colorado in fulfilling their expectations for the flagship university of Colorado. The result has been an eye-opening, "outside-in" process.

 The public input worked in two ways. First, external stakeholders made up half of our nearly 60-person steering committee. At the same time, our faculty interviewed "thought leaders" in 16 Colorado communities to discuss how CU could better serve their communities as the state's flagship public university in 2030. We solicited ideas and expectations from Alamosa to Aurora, Durango to Denver, Greeley to Grand Junction and everywhere in between.

Our fortunes are tied to Colorado's unique communities near and far. We want to know what they need from us. And we're seeking their vision for all that we might become.

We will now reach out to government, corporate and business leaders from across the state and nation to solicit their input and guidance on this transformational plan for the future.

We have identified 10 "transformational initiatives" to prepare the university for the needs of our youth, our citizens, our businesses, communities and the State of Colorado in 2030. It's a contract with the people of Colorado - a guarantee that we will deliver on our promises.

Some of these initiatives include:

• Creating multiple degree tracks with the expectation that entering students can earn a master's degree within four years.
• Implementing a year-round campus with an academic calendar of three semesters instead of two.
• Providing a multi-year residential academic experience for every entering student.
• Establishing the Colorado Academy – a new model of individualized, self-directed learning tracks.
• Initiating a stronger research collaboration with other regional universities, industry and federal laboratories in biotechnology, neuroscience, energy, atmospheric and space sciences, and computational science to name a few.
• Inviting the world's best thinkers to visit, work and study at CU-Boulder.

We're very excited about this plan. The Regents have given us their initial approval. We will hold public forums on campus this fall before presenting a final plan to the Regents in November.

Introduction of Speakers
Glenn Porzak
It is my pleasure to introduce a great friend to the university – distinguished alum and Chairman of the University of Colorado Foundation Board, Glenn Porzak. He was one of the first to climb the "Seven Summits," – the highest peak on each of the world's seven continents and he has literally taken CU to the top. He took the
CU flag to the summit of Mount Everest. Now he's guiding CU to the top in fundraising --- with the record-setting $125 million in the just-completed fiscal year.

Those who knew Glenn back in 1967 got a hint of his adventuresome spirit when he was a handler for Ralphie – the year Ralphie first led the football team onto the field. In 1970 he served as senior class president.

Glenn graduated with distinction from CU in Arts and Sciences in 1970 and earned his law degree from the CU School of Law in 1973. Today he is Managing Partner of Porzak, Browning & Bushong LLP specializing in Western water law.

Dr. Mary Kraus
Dr. Mary Kraus has been a professor at the University of Colorado since 1983 and she has been chair of our Department of Geological Sciences for the past four years. Her research uses sedimentary rocks to interpret ancient climates and she is especially interested in a dramatic global warming episode that took place 55 million years ago. Dr. Kraus received her Bachelor's of Science from Yale, her Master's of Science from the University of Wyoming and her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado.

Jeff Bzdelik
Men's basketball coach Jeff Bzdelik is embarking on his first season at the University of Colorado. The former head coach of the NBA's Denver Nuggets, Coach Bzdelik comes to us from the United States Air Force Academy where he recorded a two-year record of 50-16. He took his team to the NCAA Tournament in 2006 and to the Final Four of the National Invitational Tournament in 2007. His two-year win total of 50 was an all-time best at Air Force. With the Nuggets, Coach Bzdelik engineered a 26-game improvement in 2003-2004 over the previous year – the sixth best turnaround in NBA history.

Coach Bzdelik is the perfect fit for our new athletic environment. His experience and his commitment to scholar-athletes on and off the court will take the basketball team and the athletic department to the next level.

Students
It gives me great pleasure to introduce two of our star undergraduates so you can see the kind of top-flight students and citizens that your generous gifts support at the University of Colorado.

Stacy Romero
Stacy Romero was born and raised in Westminster and is a 2004 graduate of Standley Lake High School. She is a double major in Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and Integrative Physiology and she is pursuing a leadership certificate.

Stacy is involved in the Minority Arts and Sciences Program, the President's Leadership Class and Pi Lambda Chi Latina Sorority. She also is a scholar in the National institutes of Health/Howard Hughes Medical Institute research program for diversity in the biosciences. If that doesn't keep her busy, Stacy also works with the Timmy Foundation helping to provide health care in Third World countries.

Colin West
Colin West, a sophomore from Fort Collins, competed in speech and debate at Rocky Mountain High School. He is a 2006 Boettcher Scholar studying Engineering, Physics and Applied Math. Colin also is a member of the President's Leadership Class and he is working on a particle physics research project.

Now you know why I think I have the best job in the world, leading an institution that produces great future leaders of our state and our nation like Colin and Stacy.

Thank you for joining us and thank you again for your continued support. A year ago I would not have thought it possible to accomplish everything that we have accomplished. But in the last year I have witnessed the commitment and dedication to this university from faculty, alumni and benefactors. Now, I know anything is possible.

Thank you for all you do on behalf of the University of Colorado at Boulder.