Published: Oct. 4, 2017

As the convener and facilitator of our campus conversation on Rethinking the University: the futures of learning and discovery, we are pleased to report this conversation is going strong.  

Vice Provost and Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs Jeff Cox
Vice Provost and AVC for Faculty Affairs Jeff Cox,
Convener of the Academic Futures campus conversation

Research & Innovation Office Grand Challenge Director of Strategic Projects Emily Cobabe-Ammann
RIO Director of Strategic Projects Emily CoBabe-Ammann,
Facilitator of the Academic Futures campus conversation

We are now fully engaged in both talking about Academic Futures with departments and other units and having themed conversations on a wide variety of topics across campus. We’re hearing from all quarters of campus—and are particularly delighted at the representation of new faculty and staff in both the town hall meetings and in the themed conversations.

Within our themed conversations—in which attendees are reacting to themes that emerged from our town hall process—ideas are surfacing with passion and imagination, and the conversations are generating a wide range of suggestions for improving and supporting learning, scholarship, research and creative work.

We’ve heard about the desire to become more student-centric, the need to strengthen interdisciplinary research, the issues facing graduate education, the importance of more closely linking scholarship and teaching, the possibility of changing the structure of our degrees to provide students more flexibility and literally hundreds of other suggestions.

You can read about these conversations and see summaries of them at the Academic Futures website. You can see a full schedule of next week’s themed conversations here.

On Tuesday, Oct. 10, Provost Russell Moore will announce the composition of the Academic Futures Committee in his regular column in CU Boulder Today, and he will provide an update on the great turnout we have seen for volunteers to serve as campus listeners.

In the meantime, we enthusiastically invite you to participate in a themed discussion so you can offer your perspectives, visions and ideas as a CU faculty member, staff member or student. You can look for updates on the Academic Futures process each Wednesday in CU Boulder Today, along with calendar updates on themed conversations in Monday and Thursday’s email editions.

Jeff Cox,
Vice Provost and Associate Vice Chancellor for Faculty Affairs
Convener of the Academic Futures campus conversation

Emily CoBabe-Ammann,
Director of Strategic Projects, Research and Innovation Office
Facilitator of the Academic Futures campus conversation