Office of the Chancellor | University of Colorado at Boulder

Spring Semester Campus Update
April 3, 2009
Interim Chancellor Philip DiStefano

Phil DiStefano, interim Chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder, discusses the progress of the Flagship 2030 strategic plan to the greater university community at the UMC on April 3, 2009. (Photo by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado)

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Good morning. Welcome. Thank you for coming. I am Phil DiStefano, the Interim Chancellor of CU-Boulder. I also have served as the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for the last eight years. I have had the pleasure of being here at the University of Colorado at Boulder for 35 years. It is also my pleasure to introduce my wife, Yvonne.

I was both humbled and honored to accept the appointment of Interim Chancellor by President Benson. As many of you know, I also served as the Interim Chancellor from January 2005 to July 2006 during a period when CU-Boulder was facing a number of challenges

The challenges we faced together during that period remind me of the quote by British clergyman Robert South, who said, "Problems can become opportunities when the right people come together." We have certainly shown that to be true at CU-Boulder.

Today, we face new challenges, and I see new opportunities. We come together today at a time of critical transition, as we continue to pursue important transformation, during a time of budget challenges. We also come together at a time of tremendous momentum. It will be up to us as a university community to carry that momentum forward.

While I am disappointed by the jury's decision, I am still confident that the process we used to review allegations of research misconduct was appropriately applied in this case. The university attorneys will evaluate the next steps in the legal process. It is too early to comment on how the judge's final decision might impact the campus, as that decision has not yet been rendered. I think it's important, however, to begin to put this case behind us, and to focus on meeting some very pressing challenges: implementing our Flagship 2030 Strategic Plan, managing significant fiscal and resource challenges, and effectively preparing our students for a rapidly changing world. And that's what we're here to talk about today.

Indeed, we have much to talk about during this critical juncture for our university. I appreciate the chance to meet with you this morning. For the next 20 minutes or so I would like to talk about challenges facing us with the budget this fiscal year and next, moving forward on our Flagship 2030 strategic plan, preparing for our 2010 accreditation, and the beginning stages of our 10-year master plan.

Let me begin by updating you on our Chancellor search. I think all of you join me in thanking Dr. Bud Peterson for his service to the university as chancellor. He was a trusted friend and colleague to many of us. I believe we will see the benefit of Bud's leadership long after he has moved on to pursue new opportunities as President at Georgia Tech University

President Benson has acknowledged that the work we are doing at CU-Boulder, as the state's flagship university, is vital and pressing, and therefore it is important that we proceed deliberately but quickly in our search for our next permanent Chancellor, a position for which I have asked to be considered, and I thank those faculty and staff who nominated me.

Our next Chancellor will join a strong and experienced leadership team at CU-Boulder that has helped lead us through both uplifting and trying times.

The Chancellor's search committee received recommendations for internal candidates through April 1 and it is having its first meeting today. The goal, as announced by President Benson, is to have the internal search completed by May 1. The 12-member search committee includes representatives from a broad cross-section of the campus community including representatives from the Alumni Association, the Boulder Faculty Assembly, Staff Council, the sciences, humanities, undergraduate student government, graduate student government, deans, and diversity and community engagement.

I know that one of the topics on everyone's mind today is our budget. CU-Boulder and all of higher education are facing challenging economic times. As you may have read, the Joint Budget Committee of the Colorado Legislature has proposed over $400 million in funding reductions to higher education this fiscal year ending June 30 and into the next fiscal year beginning on July 1st. This represents a reduction of more than half of the total current state funding support for higher education in Colorado. If these cuts are ultimately incorporated into the state budget by the full Legislature and Governor, it will be devastating to the public higher education system in Colorado; and, even though state support is not our major funding source, the implications for us would be quite severe.

However, it is most important to note that the process of setting the state budget is not complete, and we anticipate these proposed reductions to higher education will change - we hope in a more favorable way. Unfortunately it may be many weeks before we know the final state budget figures and how they impact us. However, even if this most recent funding reduction to higher education is reduced or somehow reversed, we know we still have work to do to bring our budget into balance for the new fiscal year beginning July 1st given the earlier reductions in state funding proposed for CU-Boulder.

We have worked together in recent years to resolve funding reductions from the state, and I am confident that with a continuation of that collaborative effort we will be able to make the hard decisions necessary to meet our current and emerging budget challenges with the same levels of integrity and professionalism that we have mustered in the past. To date, we have taken reductions of nearly $4 million in the current fiscal year, by eliminating new investments that had been approved by the Board of Regents last June, but not yet fully expended by the campus. This is a lost opportunity, but allows us to complete this semester without major disruption to our faculty and students.

When we have a better idea of the magnitude of further reductions, we will discuss the impacts with campus constituency groups including the Boulder Faculty Assembly, the Deans Council, the Vice Chancellors' group and other campus groups and offices. Given the semester is coming to an end, this process may require us to work with those governance representatives who are available this summer. I want to assure a dialogue that is as open and transparent as possible will occur.

Of further concern is how the economy may impact enrollment at CU-Boulder and across the country. At this point we are projecting an overall enrollment size similar to the current levels - however, with a richer mix of resident students. We anticipate a freshman class enrollment comparable to recent years, but it is unlikely to be as large as the record 2008 class. We will pay particular attention to non-resident enrollment which - with a significantly higher tuition rate - may be more impacted by the national economy.

The biggest unknown is the yield rate of accepted students. We will know more after May 1 - the national confirmation deadline.

Admissions Director Kevin MacLennan, our vice chancellors, and associate vice chancellors, have been traveling to 18 major cities across the country since March 21 visiting with accepted - but not necessarily confirmed - high school seniors and their parents. We are encouraged by the record-breaking turnout we are seeing at our CU-Boulder receptions in the last two weeks. Last weekend alone, we saw 316 students and parents in Los Angeles, 248 in Irvine and 238 in Chicago. Tomorrow we are hosting a reception on campus for 3,500 admitted students and their parents - half of whom are from out of state. Given the forecast, let's hope that snow is at least a small part of the attraction.

The upshot of the budget issues is the following: We have been careful fiscal managers with our limited resources for the past several years, and as a result we have thus far been able to forestall significant damage to our core enterprise - but there are further challenges ahead that remain somewhat undefined at this point. The key will be for us to communicate any credible information we may learn about our situation, and to engage the broad campus leadership and governance structures to develop solutions when the final numbers from the state and enrollment are known.

Throughout the entire discussion, I want to let you know that I am determined to continue moving us forward, to enact the key elements of Flagship 2030 that are so critical to our continued success, and to identify the resources to do so, even in this challenging financial environment. The current environment is difficult, but we will not retreat from the call to action that has been put forward by the development of and support for Flagship 2030.

The 2010 North-Central Association accreditation and Self Study, co-chaired by Senior Vice Chancellor Ric Porreca and myself, is moving along very well and I want to express great thanks to the Steering Committee members, many of whom I see in the audience today. The Self Study is nearing completion.

Every 10 years we are asked to demonstrate how we are accomplishing our role and mission through a nationally recognized accreditation process. The examination of our efforts by an outside panel of our peers could not be coming at a better time. With our strategic plan defined, we have perhaps never been clearer about who we are and where we are going. Flagship 2030, and its implementation, is inextricably linked to our accreditation.

The process starts with the preparation of the Self Study report of our programs, policies and practices. The Self Study is part of a continuum of strategic planning initiatives that include Flagship 2030, the development of fundraising goals and the preparation of the 10-year Facilities Master Plan. We will post the second draft of the Self Study on April 15 and ask the Steering Committee to review and critique it by May 15. Then we will finalize it over the summer and have the final report on the accreditation Web site by September. The NCA site visit team will visit the campus next February.

Just as Flagship 2030 will drive our 10-year accreditation, it also will steer our facilities Master Plan. We are required to do a master plan every 10 years. The last one started in 1997 and was completed in 2001, so it is a long haul. Today, we are in the initial stages of our new Master Plan. We are not only planning for space needs but also where we want the campus to grow and what we want it to look like.

Today's master plan must look at things past campus master plans did not. While we still look at debt capacity, today we also look at sustainability capacity in a real, pressing way that we have not in the past. Sustainability means something different than it did 10 years ago. Today it means carbon neutrality and a commitment to LEED-gold-certified energy efficient buildings. Sustainability will be an overarching theme of the master planning process.

The East Campus in the 1980s was seen as a private partner research park but that model has not been as robust as we envisioned. Now the vision has changed from a research park to a research campus that is an extension of the main campus. So the question becomes, how do we get students, faculty and staff back and forth quickly, efficiently, safely and seamlessly while limiting the university's carbon footprint?

Led by Vice Chancellor Frank Bruno and Campus Architect Paul Leef, we have just begun the first phase of the master planning process: assessment and issue identification. We are seeking feedback now from internal and external university communities. We have already met with some campus groups and the Boulder City Council and we will be meeting with all campus stakeholders. We are anxious for your feedback. I know there is eagerness on your part to be involved and we will certainly accommodate that interest. There will be many opportunities for involvement as we get this process underway. We will likely be forming a number of task forces including those on Parking and Transportation, Infrastructure, East Campus and others.

I also see many people here today who invested great time, energy and expertise in our strategic plan, Flagship 2030 people who have worked hard the last 16 months toward implementing Flagship 2030 since it was approved by the Board of Regents. It is our vision for our future and that of our students in the 21st century.

At the Boulder City Council study session last week, city council members repeatedly called Flagship 2030 exciting, groundbreaking and visionary. But they asked the question: Will Flagship 2030 lose steam with a change in leadership? The answer is no. There are several reasons why.

This is a plan developed by the CU-Boulder community. The community has accepted Flagship 2030 and completely embraced its vision. President Benson and the Board of Regents have endorsed our plan as a far-reaching and long-lasting blueprint for CU-Boulder success.

Secondly, we received huge public buy-in from the 16 Colorado communities we visited in developing the plan, and from our own community here in Boulder. It is a compact a promise with the people of Colorado that their flagship university will succeed and proceed along a dynamic path. Hundreds of internal and external stakeholders are invested in this plan.

Third, Flagship 2030 is the foundation of our fundraising efforts, our reaccreditation and our master planning. Senior Vice Chancellor Ric Porreca and I, as co-chairs of the Steering Committee, are committed to seeing Flagship 2030 through from vision to reality, as is the entire senior leadership team and the Deans' Council. The beauty of the plan is that the coming and going of campus leaders does not supersede the momentum of the university itself. Flagship 2030 is now a plan in motion.

Phase I of Flagship 2030 was conceiving the plan and gaining the Regents' approval. Phase 2 was developing recommendations for implementation. Today, In Phase 3, we are ready to build an investment strategy for the highest priority recommendations.

Will today's budget challenges slow the progress of Flagship 2030? Clearly the magnitude of the budget reductions will drive our ability to make investments at the pace that we might prefer. But, I can assure you, it will not stop progress. As we build our budgets we will still make it a priority to find resources to advance this plan.

For example, one of the goals of Flagship 2030 is to increase tenure and tenure-track faculty by 300 over 10 years. We are off to a good start. We have already funded 67 new tenure-track positions in the last two years, including an additional 10 in Arts and Sciences to help manage the growth of students in that college. And this year we will be funding 13 of the 25 new faculty positions we had planned for fall 2010. Most departments report they are successfully recruiting their top choices. In addition, I have noticed that we are adding senior-level faculty with tenure demonstrating that CU-Boulder is an attractive institution for established faculty from around the country.

So the next question is: What of the 18 Flagship 2030 Initiatives are we ready to move forward on now?

I intend to share with the deans, the Phase 2 committee chairs, and the faculty assembly, a summary of the Phase 2 reports I received earlier in the semester. This will include commentary on proposed actionable initiatives. My hope is to get feedback from all of you, on our understanding of what we believe is actionable now. Then we want to incorporate those proposed actionable items into our budget discussions so that in the fall we will have an investment strategy in which to proceed over the next several years.

First, we will continue to focus on all eight of the Core Initiatives those that must be maintained to keep us competitive. These are the initiatives that are fundamental to our continued success. Allow me to quickly review them.

Among the 10 transformational initiatives, we think there are seven that are actionable in the near term. In fact, you have already seen progress and momentum behind them.

Residential Colleges is a combined living and learning experience for freshmen through upperclassmen in which a professor lives right in the residence hall. Our first residential college is already up and running - the Kittredge Honors Program at renovated Arnett Hall has spaces for offices, tutoring, recitations, seminars, discussion groups, and classes. In addition, the Engineering Honors Program will open this fall in newly renovated Andrews Hall with a faculty-in-residence. Also, the Global Studies Residential Academic Program will be housed in Cheyenne-Arapaho Hall for the next two years and will relocate to Smith Hall once that renovation is complete.

Experiential Learning - we anticipate that students entering in 2010 or 2011 will graduate with two experiential experiences. These experiential learning experiences could include study abroad, service learning, undergraduate research opportunity programs, and honors theses.

Forming the Colorado Research Diamond. Institutions with unique strengths working together to solve problems for the common good is the goal of the Colorado Research Diamond which carries the promise of spurring economic development. We are already seeing this embodied in our work with Colorado State University, the Colorado School of Mines and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory. And we see it in our collaboration with the CU-Denver Anschutz Campus in molecular biotechnology. We've also had discussions with the University of Wyoming on collaborative work in computational sciences to expand the research diamond to our neighboring state.

Building a Global Crossroads in which students and faculty do exchanges to solve worldwide problems and offer us a greater diversity of perspectives on our campus. Just in the last year we have hosted and participated in a number of cross-global conferences and right now we are exploring possibilities for increasing our international enrollment.

Transcending Traditional Academic Boundaries. We will build on our excellent record of interdisciplinary research and creative work. Indeed we are already seeing this with our Energy Initiative, the Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology and in our humanities, arts and communications work at ATLAS.

Creating University Villages. As part of our work on the master plan, we need to look at the east campus, Williams Village, Grandview, and west Folsom and how development or re-development of these sites can be done in a way that is sensitive to environmental and transportation issues, comprehensive mixed-use opportunities and partnerships, and sensitivity to the surrounding community.

The last of the seven we want to immediately address is Making Enterprise Work, which refers to the fact that we are seeking greater operating flexibility and expanded resources. Since CU receives less than 8 percent of its budget from the state we are considered a state enterprise. We have a bill in the legislature now that we hope will give us more operating flexibility as an enterprise giving us more control in setting our tuition and increasing financial aid. We also want to increase entrepreneurial activities like technology transfer.

In my 35 years at the university I have not seen momentum like this. Now even as we face our challenges - it is up to us to take this tremendous momentum and run with it.

We have a strong leadership team - both people who have guided us through troubled times - and a new group of quality leaders with experience.

We have great people doing wonderful things. We recently received a $5 million endowment to support our Engineering for Developing Communities program in the College of Engineering and Applied Science to establish a center and an endowed chair to be held by Professor Bernard Amadei.

Just last week, Assistant Professor Joaquin Espinosa and Assistant Professor Rob Knight were awarded Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist Awards, which will support them and their work for six years. This is a great honor to them at the university.

With strong leadership and great people, we have tremendous opportunity within our grasp opportunity that is created by hard work.

One of my favorite figures in American history is Thomas Edison, for his ability to move society forward to the benefit of generations beyond his own. Edison held 1,093 patents and created the world's first industrial research laboratory. He once said, "To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk."

But my favorite saying from Edison is this: "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

Today, we have the opportunity before us, to take the next great step for the University of Colorado at Boulder.