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Who doesn’t love a top 10 list? While the ideas and suggestions that have been offered as part of Academic Futures: Rethinking the university–the futures of learning and discoverynumber in the hundreds, we wanted to share with you some of the consistent themes we’ve heard and that the committee is currently taking up.

Vice Provost and AVC for Faculty Affairs and Convener of the Academic Futures Campus Conversation Jeff Cox

RIO Director of Strategic Projects and Facilitator of the Academic Futures Campus Conversation Emily CoBabe-Ammann

10. The process yielded groundbreaking ideas. For example, check out Helmut Muller-Sievers’ white paper on whether we need departments at all, Nan Goodman’s essay on doing away with student credit hours and Berk et al.’s white paper on hacking the academy.

9. Equity and inclusion play a key role across Academic Futures. From inclusive pedagogy to social integration to pay and benefit equity challenges, the CU Boulder community values and supports diversity in all of its forms and equity as a baseline value for the campus. It wants to see the campus work toward defined visions of both.

8. Chris Braider (French and Italian) wins the award for most prolific writer of white papers by a single author (five!), a fascinating set of essays on the basic foundations of our university. Worth a read!

7. Student advising is everywhere! Representatives from student advising showed up at nearly every conversation in the fall, and their contributions in white papers were voluminous.

6. The theme of “exploring” emerged in discussions around both undergraduate and graduate education. This includes finding time for undergraduates to explore when they arrive at campus, using partnerships (industry and community) to expand opportunities for exploring beyond the campus’ borders and using international experiences to broaden our students’ experience.

5. Internationalization or creating a global campus emerged from almost every corner of campus and in many different forms. But, campus was also clear in saying, “We’ve talked about this for more than a decade without making sufficient progress. If we are going to do it, let’s decide on an approach and then do it. If not, let’s stop talking about it.”

4. We heard a lot about the campus’s commitment to our status as a comprehensive research university. People spoke with passion about the work we do in creating new knowledge and art, in engaging revolutionary ideas and in finding solutions to pressing problems. There is a strong desire to connect research with both our teaching and with the communities we serve.

3. Our community is passionate about teaching our students and wants to find ways to do it better through, for example, a comprehensive approach to the use of technology in the classroom. Regardless of mechanism, there is a drive to incorporate educational best practices into our teaching to meet our students’ evolving needs.

2. Untapped resources—from alumni networks to the Boulder community to our students—played a key role in discussions. There is a strong feeling that we can do a better job of engaging and using all of our human assets to strengthen our programs and our students’ experiences.

1. Rethinking our academic futures in exciting ways, the CU Boulder community is ready to take on the changes that Academic Futures represents. From every community—faculty, staff, students and administrators—we heard calls for creative transformations and for the bold actions needed to facilitate them. We would, of course, expect nothing less from our campus. 

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 for the Research & Innovation Office
Facilitator of the Academic Futures Campus Conversation