ODECE’s work has had a powerful impact on thousands of students, parents, and employees at CU Boulder over the years. The departments, programs and events under the ODECE umbrella work consistently at improving students’ academic success and creating ongoing opportunities for people to learn and grow. Our values of diversity and inclusive excellence form a bedrock for everything that happens in our community. It is through these values that we are empowered to achieve the Chancellor’s three strategic imperatives to stand strong as leaders, be the top public university for innovation, and positively impact humanity.

Numbers have the power to show our impact in a real and tangible way. The following three examples just scratch the surface of ODECE’s positive impact on campus.

  • Within the Colorado Diversity Initiative, the SMART program has been providing support for incoming graduate students in STEM fields for many years. To date, the program has impacted at least 750 graduate students as they entered their advanced degree programs at CU Boulder.
  • Within the Office of Disability Services, there is a lab that produces documents in alternative formats so that students who might require digital or Braille formats can have equitable access to all of their course content. The lab team is small but mighty--over the last academic year, they converted over 1,200 documents, and many of those were entire books!
  • Within the Pre-Collegiate Development Program, students from across the state of Colorado come to CU Boulder to engage in educational programming over the summer. For most of these students, this opportunity marks the first time that they have set foot on a college campus. Since its inception in 1983, PCDP has welcomed over 7,000 students and their families to the program, exposing them to the promise of higher education.

Our actions define who we are. We believe these actions, and the many more that ODECE engages in every day, will help CU Boulder create and sustain the inclusive culture we all want to be a part of. Check back again soon for new examples of ODECE’s impact.