Over the past 130 years, CU-Boulder has built an impressive record of success: a world-class teaching and research faculty; a strong pool of students attracted to excellent undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs; a dedicated and proficient group of professional and support staff employees; and a beautiful physical campus. These qualities have allowed the university to grow and excel—but staying competitive will require us to invest additional resources in several core areas outlined below.
Investing in the Vision
The Core Initiatives
While developing a strategic plan for the next quarter-century, we also considered what is necessary for CU-Boulder to compete and succeed in the near term. Only by remaining competitive in our core mission today will we be able to maintain the visibility and leadership we will need to support Colorado's prosperity and become a global presence in the future.
- 1. ENHANCING EDUCATION AND SCHOLARSHIP. We plan to grow our faculty and rethink our undergraduate education model.
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In order to offer a high-quality educational experience and foster research excellence, CU-Boulder will increase the size and enhance the quality of our faculty. During the next 10 years, we will add at least 300 new tenure-track faculty members who will help to improve undergraduate and graduate education and to enhance our research capabilities. To sustain these improvements in faculty numbers relative to enrollment, any significant increase in student enrollment will be accompanied by additional new faculty members.
With these investments, we will make substantial progress toward achieving a tenure-track faculty-to-student ratio comparable to our public research university peers. We will increase the number of tenured faculty teaching undergraduates and enhance opportunities for undergraduate research. In addition, we will review the appropriate use of instructors in contributing to the best possible educational experience for our students.
As we add new positions, we will also identify and implement strategies for enhancing our faculty diversity. A significant increase in new and diverse faculty will help us remain competitive in the quality of teaching and the educational experience for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. Just as important, a robust body of tenure-track faculty will advance our research mission, creating new opportunities for research, scholarship, and creative work that will encourage our continued success in competing for contracts and grants from federal agencies, private industry, and other funding sources.
Many of the new faculty positions will be distributed strategically among the core disciplines, such as the humanities, the arts, the sciences, the social sciences, engineering, business, education, and journalism. Others will be assigned to our distinctive areas, ranging from our research institutes to music to law. Other faculty positions will be added in emerging interdisciplinary fields, such as biotechnology, sustainable and renewable energy, geosciences, environmental studies, technology, entrepreneurship, and the American West. In support of our faculty and student research and creative efforts, we also will increase investments in start-up needs, equipment, and summer research funds.
By understanding how students learn best—and adjusting our teaching methods accordingly—we can move forward on the broader initiatives. Taken together, these concepts will help form a new model for undergraduate education at CU-Boulder.
Beyond adding faculty positions, we must redefine the way we deliver undergraduate education to better prepare our students for the future. Through curricular and other learning experiences, we want our students to gain a broader understanding of the world, develop a sense of personal and global citizenship, and build leadership skills. By 2030, we anticipate dramatic changes in both the content and the mode of teaching. No one knows exactly how curricular needs will evolve in the next quarter-century, but we will start campus-wide conversations now to ensure our long-term ability to meet them.
We therefore propose initiating a process for examining CU-Boulder's current curriculum and teaching methodologies in light of a changing world. Curricular reform is a challenging, contentious undertaking, but the successful universities of the future will be most responsive to the changing landscape of learning and teaching. In our curricular planning for 2030, for example, we will include a focus on understanding and appreciating the foundations of diverse cultures and traditions. We also must examine our academic and administrative structure consistently over time to shape the most effective and agile university possible.
We believe our examination of curricular and teaching issues will lay the groundwork for the transformative "flagship initiatives" proposed later in this document (for example, the Colorado Undergraduate Academy, residential colleges, and experiential learning proposals).
- 2. FOSTERING RESEARCH EXCELLENCE. We will increase investments in research and creative work by 5 percent each year. We also will provide targeted investments in high-performance computing facilities, facilities that promote interdisciplinary discovery across the university, and facilities for cutting-edge research enterprises, such as nanotechnology and biomedical advances.
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CU-Boulder's academic reputation rests in large measure on world-class research, scholarship, and creative work by our accomplished research faculty and graduate students. From their laboratories and studios, they bring honor and recognition to the university as well as exceptional learning opportunities for our students. We are committed to enhancing CU-Boulder's research mission, a mission that is critical to our standing as a flagship university.
By increasing the number of tenure-track faculty and remaining competitive in the recruitment of top graduate students from across the country and around the world, we will strengthen our reputation in research, scholarship, and creative work and provide greater support for graduate education.
For decades, CU-Boulder's research faculty have excelled at obtaining federal research contracts and grants. Since 2000, for example, total awards have increased by 24 percent. However, intense competition for finite federal dollars will present challenges for these growth rates. Clearly, we will need expanded institutional support to ensure continued excellence in research and creative work. We intend to become a global presence in research and scholarship by 2030. To realize this vision, we must make the right investments now in the discovery enterprise.
One of our most visible investments will be in the build-out of the University of Colorado Research Park, now an underutilized parcel just east of the Main Campus. This 200-acre space offers enormous potential for accelerating CU-Boulder's top-tier research enterprise. On this land, we will create a vibrant extension of the Main Campus that will further our achievements in science and technology research and development. In the tradition of academic spaces, the research park will feature mixed uses, including research, teaching, service, student support, residential spaces, and recreation. Several existing research-oriented facilities will form the nucleus of this new, more distinctive space for learning and discovery, with an emphasis on sustainability and environmentally sensitive development.
- 3. ENHANCING GRADUATE EDUCATION. We will increase the number of graduate students to 20 percent of the total student population.
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As a comprehensive research university, CU-Boulder must help ensure a robust pool of PhD and master's degree students from whose ranks the leaders of tomorrow will emerge.
Graduate and professional education, including CU-Boulder's Graduate School, help drive the nation's competitiveness by preparing the intellectual leadership of tomorrow—the future professors, scientists, artists, scholars, lawyers, and policy-makers who will shape our world.
Currently, graduate and professional students account for approximately 15 percent of the total student enrollment; we will increase that number to 20 percent by strengthening our recruiting efforts and enhancing graduate student incentives.
In addition, we will rethink CU-Boulder graduate degree programs. The landscape is changing for the traditional master's degree, for example, with a trend toward more professional master's degrees. The professional master's degree is a terminal degree with a specific and often highly specialized professional employment goal—different from the traditional academic master's degree in many respects. We already have launched a number of professional master of arts degrees in the humanities and social sciences, as well as professional master of science degrees in the sciences and engineering. Interdisciplinary and professional certificates offer yet another way to prepare for tomorrow's specialized professions. We believe these nontraditional approaches, properly implemented and promoted, will help us substantially increase the number of CU-Boulder graduate students.
- 4. ENSURING ACCESS. We will enhance student financial support by doubling both merit and need-based financial aid within the next five years; we will initiate a statewide dialogue on how Colorado can expand access to higher education.
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While augmenting financial aid is critical to expanding access and equal opportunity, it is only one step toward the goal. We believe equal access to educational opportunities will become increasingly important to Colorado's future—and will require statewide commitment at all levels, with more attention given to preparing all of the state's primary and secondary students for higher education.
At CU-Boulder, we will play a leadership role in communicating the urgency of this issue—and we will lead discussions among Colorado's political and educational leaders to help evaluate needs, identify solutions, and develop action plans as a state.CU-Boulder is committed to recruiting outstanding students from a diverse talent pool throughout the state, the nation, and the world. In particular, we want to provide access for qualified Colorado residents, regardless of their ability to pay. Although financial aid has been the fastest-growing budget item for the past four years, we still lag behind our peers in overall funds available to help attract the best students. Clearly, we need to increase our financial aid investment if we are to compete for outstanding undergraduate students. At the graduate level, we also must enhance stipends, health care, and housing to recruit top-tier graduate students. Our overall recruitment strategies must reflect our intent to build a diverse student body that is more representative of the world today and tomorrow.
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A talented and diverse staff is essential to the administration and operation of a major research university. Staff members play a critical role in the success of faculty engaged in teaching and research, and they are important partners in the development of innovative classroom pedagogies. We also know that student satisfaction and success is closely related to high-quality staff support for academic advising, career counseling, and other opportunities for student development. All areas of the university rely heavily on effective staff support, but personnel levels have not kept pace with the growth of faculty and students. Therefore, we will increase the number of staff members, helping ensure proper levels of support for our aspirations in teaching, research and creative work, and service.
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Soon, it will be common for a single instructor to teach students on many continents, creating global classrooms made possible by technology. CU-Boulder will remain on the leading edge of new information and communications capabilities to support technology-enhanced learning, research and creative work, and campus operations. In a constantly changing technological environment, we will be flexible and visionary—able to respond to immediate needs and to lead in the development and adoption of the next revolutionary advances.
Over the past 20 years, universities have seen a dramatic transformation in the use and study of new technologies, a trend we expect to accelerate during the coming decades. Already, technology has opened up new opportunities for global discourse, such as videoconferences with academic partners around the world.
We also will invest in another kind of infrastructure: the sandstone-and-mortar variety. Our university has one of the most architecturally distinguished campuses in the nation, but a world-class university requires the constant renewal and enhancement of its physical infrastructure. To remain competitive, we will continue to expand and renovate existing facilities, creating more high-tech classroom buildings, state-of-the-art research facilities, innovative residence halls, and centers for the creative and performing arts. Our 10-year capital plan currently calls for new facilities supporting the performing and visual arts and the build-out of the University of Colorado Research Park with the construction of a new biotechnology building and a proposed geosciences facility.In addition, we will address the need for new interdisciplinary research and educational facilities to accommodate existing and emerging initiatives, and our anticipated growth in enrollment and faculty numbers will require careful planning to accommodate new needs for classroom space, faculty offices, laboratories, and studios.
Libraries traditionally are at the heart of a university's education and scholarship, serving both as repositories for knowledge and as venues for individual learning. While we expect that role to continue in the coming decades, we anticipate a very different type of library by 2030. The CU-Boulder University Libraries strategic plan recognizes that library "clients' needs and expectations are changing rapidly, fueled by new technologies and new service models…. Students and faculty expect information to be available to them whenever and wherever they want to work." We envision our libraries as a more client-centered "intellectual commons," with instruction on discovery of networked information in both a physical and virtual space. In the coming decades, our investments will focus on digital resources for "virtual information spaces," as well as creating physical spaces that encourage individual and collaborative learning, research, and creative work.
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While our commitment to action is necessary at all levels, it begins with our administration. In 2007, CU-Boulder created a new cabinet-level position to provide collaborative leadership and advocacy for our diversity efforts and to ensure that diversity-related issues are key considerations in our budgetary, administrative, academic, and governance decisions.
By 2030, CU-Boulder will be a model for the nation in applying best practices in support of diversity and inclusive excellence. Beyond the moral imperative, a world-class university cannot afford to pass up the contributions offered by different perspectives and backgrounds. To achieve this vision, we have renewed our commitment to a more welcoming and diverse community for learning, discovery, living, working, and service. We will build a university community that is more representative of the larger community, the state of Colorado, the nation, and the world—and we will reach that goal through commitment and action.
As a first step, we will engage the university and external communities in developing an action plan with concrete measures for transforming CU-Boulder into a more welcoming and inclusive learning environment. This action plan will identify the initiatives we will undertake, along with the necessary resources to achieve them. The planning process will need to consider a number of key questions, such as how the university can better reach out to underrepresented students; how we can ensure that all students, faculty, and staff feel included and welcome; and what steps we can take to enhance the overall CU-Boulder campus climate.
Our leadership has already begun building partnerships throughout the university to address issues of diversity in the faculty ranks, student recruitment and retention, staff development, and campus climate. A five-year plan will be developed in collaboration with academic leaders to recruit and retain a diverse faculty throughout our colleges, schools, centers, and institutes. Special attention will be given to assessing retention programs for first-generation college students and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. We will enhance recruitment of graduate students from diverse backgrounds, including establishing partnerships with colleges and universities that traditionally attract students of color. We also will work with various university offices to address the needs and goals of international students at CU-Boulder. Staff diversity efforts will focus on expanded professional development opportunities aimed at attracting and retaining a diverse and highly qualified staff as well as building a more welcoming and inclusive campus culture. As a university, we will work to eliminate physical, communication, and attitudinal barriers to access. We will enhance support for the offices and programs that serve underrepresented students, faculty, and staff. We will reach out to key civic constituents in the community, state, and nation, seeking their input and advice.
Additionally, an integral part of our diversity efforts for 2030 will be programs to ensure that all students have academic and experiential learning opportunities in the American principles of self government. CU-Boulder will be a model among its peers for programs in which students learn the rights and responsibilities of national, state, and local citizenship. This will include, but will not be limited to, understanding of the founding documents and the institutions and structures of federal, state, and local government.
By working together, both on and off campus, we intend to refocus and improve our strategies in order to build a more inclusive university community.
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We recognize the challenges of affecting change in climate and diversity, but such change is fundamental to Flagship 2030—and to the core values of our university. With the active involvement of our students, staff, faculty, administrators, and community members, we will create a more welcoming and diverse campus environment.
Coloradans have told us they want a stronger CU presence in their communities. Clearly, we need to be there—and we need to do things that strengthen Colorado communities. Our faculty and students have the capacity and expertise to address serious community issues through research and to enrich lives with music, arts, humanities, and cultural offerings. The challenge is to find better ways of sharing that capacity with communities around the state.
We propose developing an action plan for outreach that would, for example, provide on-site learning and arts opportunities on the Western Slope, in rural Colorado communities, and at other locations outside metropolitan areas, in partnership with local institutions. We will seek new ways of applying research methods to solve critical problems facing communities around the state and we will explore new opportunities for faculty and students to engage in entrepreneurial efforts. Our action plan will be guided by input from the communities themselves. It will include bringing more Colorado teachers and high school students to campus for focused learning opportunities. The plan also will emphasize helping communities in economic development and cultural enhancement efforts. We also will establish a greater statewide CU-Boulder presence through regular visits to Colorado communities by our administrators, faculty, staff, and students.
As we look ahead to 2030, we expect that lifelong learning will be a growth component in higher education. The new flagships will need to provide a broad spectrum of educational options, including "just-in-time" skill upgrades and career retooling for alumni, professionals, and the community. CU-Boulder will begin by rethinking the structure and purpose of traditional continuing education programs given the speed of change in most professions. We will examine the potential of real-time "virtual learning environments" and nontraditional scheduling, as well as distance-learning opportunities made possible by technological advances. With these initiatives, we will be able to offer our graduates and community members timely access to the university's vast resources—for a lifetime.
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