Articles by Steven R. Leigh

Endowments help reduce the costs of education in many ways. Most importantly, endowments allow universities to support professors, graduate students and undergraduate students in undertaking visionary, high-risk, high-reward research.

Currently, CU-Boulder’s College of Arts and Sciences educates about 2,300 graduate students, nearly half of the campus total, and more than twice the number in any other single college on campus. Graduate students compose about 16 percent of the total A&S student body. These students seek advanced degrees, either at the master’s or Ph.D. level. At a comprehensive research university, they play critical roles in fulfilling our mission.

As graduation approaches, we see a notable uptick in campus activity, with term papers nearing completion and preparations for finals by both faculty and students. Recently, I was fortunate to help two honors students by serving on their thesis committees (honors theses need to be completed much earlier than other end-of-semester assignments).

As a comprehensive research and educational institution, the University of Colorado Boulder innovates. We maintain a leadership role relative to our peers by innovating across an impressive range of academic fields. Even with declining state support, CU-Boulder has continued to advance in new areas and is doing so in remarkable ways.

This week, we received the very best kind of news: Dr. David Wineland, CU-Boulder lecturer in physics and fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, won the Nobel Prize in Physics, along with his longtime colleague Dr. Serge Haroche.