Our mission is guided by CU Boulder's outreach and engagement definition:
At CU Boulder, we define outreach and engagement as the ways faculty, staff, and students collaborate with external groups in mutually beneficial partnerships that are grounded in scholarship and consistent with our role and mission as a comprehensive, public research university.
For faculty, outreach rooted in scholarship enhances teaching, research, creative work and service while addressing larger societal issues. For students and staff, community engagement and service projects link campus teaching and learning to civic responsibility and community well being. For communities, partnering with CU Boulder increases the capacity to address important social, economic and cultural issues.
At their best, outreach and engagement activities provide significant learning and growth opportunities to faculty, students, staff, and partnering communities. Whether through research projects, teaching activities, civic engagement or service learning, the reciprocal nature of outreach and engagement enriches both our academic mission and the communities we serve.
Endorsed by the CU Boulder Council of Deans, February 16, 2010
The Office for Outreach and Engagement supports CU Boulder's commitment to public outreach and community engagement. We build relationships and provide resources that enable a wide range of high-quality outreach and engagement opportunities and efforts grounded in faculty work that connect CU Boulder with individuals and communities at the local, state, and regional levels. We do this through outreach programming and support for engaged scholarship.
Since 2001, we have been connecting research, teaching and creative work with various communities in ways that are:
Publicly Focused
From innovative K-12 educational programming to collaborative research projects, we advocate for and lead key initiatives that build relationships and empower communities to meet significant public needs.
Scholarly
We bring together cutting-edge scholarship with community know-how to address complex issues that face our state and the region, and connect CU Boulder’s work with engaged scholarship nationally.
Strategic
We build institutional capacity for outreach by supporting hundreds of community and campus partners, providing seed funding for campus initiatives, developing networks and more.