CU-Boulder Facts

  • One of only 34 U.S. public research universities selected to be in the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the only one in the Rocky Mountain region
  • Offering approximately 3,600 courses in 150 fields of study, in arts and sciences, business, education, engineering, environmental design, journalism, law, and music
  • Seventy-eight degree programs at the bachelor’s level, 56 at the master’s level, and 53 at the doctoral level
  • Seventy-eight research centers and institutes exploring the arts and sciences, business, education, engineering, environmental design, journalism, law, music and other disciplines
  • Granted over 7,400 undergraduate and graduate degrees during the 2011–12 academic year
  • The top provider of Peace Corps volunteers in 2010 and 2011 among all U.S. colleges and universities, with over 2,350 alumni Peace Corps volunteers coming from CU-Boulder since the program’s founding in 1961
  • The source of more than one-third of all PhDs awarded annually in Colorado
  • Home to five Nobel laureates (four in physics; one in chemistry) and four National Medal of Science winners
  • Seventy-six new companies—from biotechnology, to aerospace, to renewable energy—based on CU faculty research discoveries since 1994, with over $1 billion in follow-on funding for those companies
  • Faculty, staff, and students serving over 335,000 Coloradans each year through community and faculty outreach programs—with additional efforts across the nation and around the world
  • A national leader in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education research and innovation with a campus-wide STEM education research center launching in September 2012
  • Research partnerships with federal labs across the Front Range of Colorado, in addition to dozens of research collaborations in countries all over the world
  • Awarded more than $380 million in sponsored research funding in fiscal year 2012
  • The only public university in the United States to design and build instruments that have flown on NASA missions to every planet in the solar system (as well as Pluto)
  • Tied for #1 in atomic/molecular/optical physics with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) every year since 2006 in the U.S. News & World Report graduate programs ranking
  • The largest contributor to the University of Colorado’s $5.3 billion in overall economic impact on the state of Colorado in fiscal year 2011–12
  • The first public university to open its doors in Colorado and the flagship of the four-campus University of Colorado System, which also includes:
    • University of Colorado Denver
    • University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
    • University of Colorado Colorado Springs
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