Transformation & Financial Resilience FAQs

• We will be focused on the priority projects that Chancellor DiStefano endorsed this past fall and that the Provost and COO have been discussing all year:
  • Examining how first-year students are enrolled at the university
  • Improving wraparound support for all students (such as advising, tutoring, and all elements of student life), and improving the first-year experience for our newest students
  • Fostering greater employee engagement and well-being
  • Enhancing operational excellence through improving technology, automation, work processes and policies
• Many of the solutions are yet to be devised. We will continue to have discussions with colleges, schools, operating units and shared governance about how we can enhance the ways we operate. 
• Key to devising and implementing these solutions is a collective commitment to doing business in ways that: 
  • Recognize the shifting demographics already being reflected in our student applications and creating an experience that better meets the needs of a more diverse student population
  • Make better use of campus-wide technologies
  • Employ our workforce more strategically
  • Reduce duplicative and manual functions
  • End a culture of exceptions in our processes and technologies that leads to some of that duplication
  • Adopt campus-wide solutions that place primacy on serving vulnerable and minoritized populations
  • Establish a culture of multi-year planning that enables us to be proactive

The transformation we are proposing will enhance our research mission with more efficient support systems in areas such as OIT and HR, allowing research teams and units to focus more effectively on discovery and innovation.

• Ending a culture of exceptions means ending the practice of different units on campus employing different or bespoke systems and processes to complete common tasks. Our goal is to use campus-wide solutions whenever possible.
• For instance, if we can reduce the number of employee time-keeping systems on campus from the current 16 to three or even one, that would result in significant cost savings for the campus, increase equity across units, and streamline processing. 
• Consolidating these types of systems would free up people's time to focus on less transactional and more high-value work.

The Budget and Fiscal Planning website hosts a number of resources for learning about the campus budget, the budget model and the budget tool.

• No. We have no current plans to cut programs, lay off large numbers of faculty or staff, impose a hiring freeze or freeze salaries.
• We are not in the position of some of our peers that are facing deficits of tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. 
• It is important to recognize that CU Boulder faces this projected deficit from a strong financial position.
• If we act now, we have time to not only close that budget gap and avoid the painful decisions and across-the-board cuts some of our peers are having to make, but also to free up resources to be visionary and innovative in the ways we deliver upon student success and new discovery 
• We do need to be judicious in our hiring practices to ensure we are aligning our resources to our highest priorities. 
• We must be thoughtful and recognize that we cannot simply keep growing our faculty and staff populations. 
• We must take a long-term approach to planning and budgeting rather than year-by-year. 

• Diversity, equity and inclusion, sustainability, and health and wellness absolutely remain priorities for our campus.
• Transforming how we do business should not impede our progress toward these priorities.
• In fact, improved business practices should free up resources to better support these and other priorities, such as implementation of the Climate Action Plan.

• Our Division of Human Resources is leading an effort to examine employee compensation as we work to ensure our people are paid competitively. 
• Implementing the right systems and technologies will support faculty and staff in doing their highest-priority work.

We will make this transformation with our values intact, including being:

• Committed to our role as a comprehensive national research university
• Mission-centered toward student success, research and creative works
• Student-centered
• People-centered
• Equity-centered

Automation and use of artificial intelligence do not mean we no longer have people performing work across campus. We envision smart use of automation and AI that will instead support people in focusing on more high-value and transformational work. 

• Athletics is an auxiliary budget, meaning it earns its own revenue and funds expenses through donor money, television revenue, merchandise, sponsorships, and game ticket sales.
• As an Auxiliary service, Athletics contributes to campus services and support through the General Administrative and Infrastructure Recharge (GAIR) rate. 
• Because Athletics is an auxiliary, coaches’ salaries do not come from tuition money, taxpayer dollars or the campus general fund.
• Coaches pay/decisions on contracts will not impact university’s ability to support our students, hire staff or address compensation for our employees.
• Overall, exposure CU Boulder has received over the past year due to increased attention on the football program has benefited the university in a number of ways, including: 
  • This past season, CU was involved in the two of the top five most-watched games in college football. After the postseason, (including bowls and the College Football Playoff games), Colorado still had five of the top 25 most-watched games of the season.
  • We’ve seen drastic increases on social media followers and impressions on both CU Athletics and main campus channels. Merchandise sales also significantly increased this year. 
  • While it’s hard to draw a direct line to Coach Sanders, applications to CU Boulder are up 20% and there has been an increase of 50.5% in applications from Black/African-American potential students.   

• Yes. We must examine everything. 
• According to Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System figures, CU Boulder has tended to have lower administrative costs than the Pac-12 peer average.
• Leadership roles are not immune from scrutiny as we examine our priorities in line with our mission. 
• We will continue to ensure that administrative costs are as streamlined as possible.

• Campus leadership is ultimately accountable for the decisions across the campus. 
• Campus leadership will be depending upon faculty and staff to help generate ideas about where we can make changes that will best serve our community. Unit-leaders know the work in their own units. 
• Thoughtful, informed approaches will allow us to avoid blunt, ineffective measures like across-the-board cuts. 
• These decisions largely will originate in our schools, colleges and administrative support units.

• We’ll be working in dialogue with our shared governance groups, including faculty, student, and staff governance.
• For example, we will engage with shared governance in the monthly meetings that Chancellor DiStefano holds with the leadership of BFA, Staff Council, CUSG, and GPSG. The Chancellor, Provost, and COO all attend. These meetings are a forum for discussion of shared concerns and goals, so that campus leadership can make decisions with all these groups’ input in mind.
• As the colleges and schools build their faculty governance groups, we encourage BFA, as the governance group for all the faculty, to work with those groups to collect their input.

• Neither: Our approach will be collaborative, one that relies on best practices, unit level realities and, whenever possible, consistency across the campus.
• Our budget model allocates to colleges, schools and units. 
• Each college, school and unit leader is responsible for allocating funding within their area of responsibility. 
• Campus leadership supports unit-level decision-making by providing tools, such as Course Enrollment Insights and the new Budget Tool, but it does not dictate a dean’s or leader’s unit-level budget decisions.
• Campus leadership will, however, be working with unit-level leaders to provide guidance and ensure that unit-level decisions are consistent with campus-wide strategies. 
• We will balance campus wide-strategies while preserving unit-level decision making responsibilities. This shared approach is critical to our long-term resiliency.

• It is important to note that CU Boulder is, overall, in a financially sound position and that plans for addressing deferred maintenance and new residence buildings north of Boulder Creek are already moving through the capital governance process with existing funding plans. 
• Transforming how we do business is geared not only toward mitigating the projected deficit but also toward freeing up funds to ensure we can deliver on major strategic priorities outlined in the Campus Master Plan, including  addressing deferred maintenance, moving forward on existing and new construction projects, increasing on-campus housing options and supporting teaching and research.