- Was founded in 1876 at Boulder,
at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
- Offers 3,400 courses in about 150 fields of study.
- Offers 85 majors at the bachelor’s level, 61 at the master’s level and 48 at the doctoral level.
- Received $256.5 million in sponsored research awards for the 2006 fiscal year, an increase of more than $100 million over the last decade. NASA and its affiliates funded most of the awards—$48.9 million—followed by the Department of Health and Human Services at $43 million and the National Science Foundation with $39.7 million.
- Had a total endowment for the 2006 fiscal year of approximately $290.7 million.
- Has tripled the number of patent applications from campus researchers over the past five years, from 31 in 2001-02 to 85 in 2005-06.
- Generated about $18 million from Technology transfer activities for the state of Colorado in 2005-06, nearly $17 million more than in 2001-02.
- Has approximately 1,250 full-time instructional faculty, with 91 percent holding a doctorate or terminal degree.
- Boasts notable alumni including Academy Award-winning actor and director Robert Redford, sports reporter Jim Gray, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White, Big Band trombonist Glenn Miller and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
- Has about 90 research centers, institutes and laboratories focusing on subjects from entrepreneurship to natural hazards. A complete list is available on the Web at www.colorado.edu/research/.
- Is one of 34 U.S. public research universities invited to join the prestigious Association of American Universities.
- Is one of the largest employers in Boulder County, providing 6,983 full-time and part-time jobs in 2006-07, excluding student employees.
- Includes 786 acres on the Main Campus, East Campus (including the Research Park), Williams Village and the Mountain Research Station north of Nederland. In 1996 the Board of Regents concluded the purchase of 308 acres of land in unincorporated Boulder County, which has been reserved for long-term future needs.
- Includes about 200 classic rural Italian-style buildings and complexes built of Colorado sandstone with red tile roofs.
- Includes the CU Research Park with several tenants such as Quantum Corp.; BEA Systems Inc.; Qwest; CDM Optics Inc.; and the University of Colorado’s Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), and the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy(CASA).
- Was ranked fourth in a review of the 50 “most architecturally successful campuses in the country,” in The Campus as a Work of Art by Thomas Gaines.
- Forbes selected the city of Boulder as America’s smartest city in 2006, citing the presence of local federal laboratories and the fact that many CU-Boulder graduates stay put once they finish school.
- Is
the first campus established in Colorado
and of the three-campus University of
Colorado system, also including:
- University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center
- University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
- Includes nine colleges and schools:
Colleges
College of Architecture and Planning
Dean Mark Gelernter
(Boulder campus has undergraduate
degree program only.)
College of Arts and Sciences
Dean Todd Gleeson
Leeds School of Business
Dean Dennis A. Ahlburg
College of Engineering and Applied
Science
Dean Robert H. Davis
College of Music
Dean Daniel Sher
Schools
Graduate School
Interim Dean Susan Avery
School of Education
Dean Lorrie Shepard
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Dean Paul Voakes
School of Law
Dean David Getches
Night and summer courses
- Division of Continuing Education and Professional
Studies
Dean Anne Heinz
Summer Session
Director Carol Mehls
Libraries
Dean James F. Williams II - Has the largest library collection in the Rocky Mountain region and is 41st among the 125 largest North American research libraries, with more than 11 million books, periodicals and government publications available in Norlin Library and the Business, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Math/Physics and Music branch libraries.
- Norlin Library includes distinct libraries on art and architecture, East Asia and science; archives and papers in the areas of Western Americana, politics, labor, environmentalism and peace and justice; special collections of manuscripts dating from 2000 B.C. to the present; and a rare book collection strongest in English and American literature.
- Chinook on the Web at libraries.colorado.edu provides access to the university’s collection, the holdings of most Colorado libraries and many library systems nationwide, periodical and information databases and many other electronic resources.
- More than 100 highly-trained staff and professional librarians provide on-site, e-mail and chat reference, classroom instruction and computer, audiovisual, collection development, interlibrary loan, reserve, circulation, acquisition preservation, cataloging and metadata services.
