The Department of Environmental Studies (ENVS) has worked diligently and purposefully to produce this strategic plan. This plan is aligned with key CU Boulder campus-level reports:

  • ‘Flagship 2030’ last updated in 2016.
  • ‘Embracing the Core Mission of Furthering the Public Good’ report released in 2018.
  • The ‘Inclusion, Diversity and Excellence in Academics (IDEA) plan’ published in 2020.

This ENVS strategic plan embodies six central themes of ‘Flagship 2030’, including fostering an environment of intellectual inspiration, as well as promoting academic rigor in a welcoming, supportive, and an inclusive place conducive to positive personal growth. Moreover, this ENVS strategic plan integrates stated areas of concentrated effort in the ‘Embracing the Core Mission of Furthering the Public Good’ report such as “interdisciplinary teaching, research and creative work” and “internationalizing our campus”. Last, the ENVS strategic plan incorporates priority action areas in the ‘IDEA plan’ including work to “learn and lead effective efforts to attract and retain a diverse faculty and staff” as well as “move accountability for diversity and inclusion from the periphery to core institutional functioning”.

A deliberate ENVS community process has led to this final strategic plan that articulates our value proposition, our vision, mission, strategic imperatives and goals. This was a process that included all members of the ENVS community.

This plan will benefit ENVS students through priorities for teaching and mentorship while also benefiting communities and partners through engagement. Furthermore, this plan will help guide ENVS research to advance efforts to confront environmental challenges in the 21st century. Our ongoing work involves knowledge transfer and co-creation of knowledge by encouraging, fostering and supporting creativity, flexibility, critical reasoning, emotional intelligence, good communication across all sectors of society. This plan sets the stage for an enhanced ENVS culture of excellence through transparent, accountable, equitable, and inclusive education of future leaders and through indefatigable work to understand complex systems and improve environmental conditions on this planet for human and non-human actors.

Our collective ambitions in ENVS at CU Boulder feed into aims to be a leading Environmental Studies department in the world. This leadership position is a means to the ends of highly-effective work – engagement, teaching, mentorship, research, practice – at the intersections of humans and the environment. As such, strategy - an integrated plan of decisions for the success of the unit - is a means to the ends of enhanced capabilities and greater effectiveness of our work in the department, situated at CU Boulder.

Here in ENVS, in 2023 we arrive at our 30th year of the ENVS undergraduate major, 20th year of the research graduate program (MS/PhD) and 7th year of the MS professional programs. Every member of the ENVS community – past or present – have important roles to play in helping us enact these stated priorities, objectives and goals.

I thank everyone who has been involved in the strategic planning process and the larger efforts to confront environmental challenges for a collectively better future together. Of particular note, I extend appreciation to (former) CU Boulder Assistant Vice Chancellor of Strategic Initiatives Mike Murray, and CU Boulder Senior Director of Education and Prevention/Deputy Title IX Coordinator, Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance Teresa Wroe as well as the ENVS Strategic Planning Committee (listed below) for their guidance and input over the past 18 months.

I look forward to closely connecting this strategy formulation with strategy implementation and execution as we advance our efforts together. We are committed to work that will fulfill the vision, mission, strategic imperatives and action items in the strategic plan, articulated in the pages that follow.

Thank you,

Max Boykoff

Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental Studies

Fellow, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)

University of Colorado Boulder