Announcements & Deadlines

Celebrating World Quantum Day at the Colorado Capitol

Megan Maneval — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 19:14:59 +0000

Celebrating World Quantum Day at the Colorado Capitol Megan Maneval Mon, 04/14/2025 - 13:14

Dignitaries from CU Boulder joined the Colorado General Assembly at the State Capitol on Monday, April 14, to celebrate World Quantum Day. Pictured here, Chancellor Justin Schwartz and Massimo Ruzzene, senior vice chancellor for research and innovation and dean of the institutes, speak to Colorado State Senator Mark Baisley.

World Quantum Day, which was launched in 2021 by a group of international scientists, is a global event celebrating quantum physics—and how insights into the universe at its smallest scales have transformed the lives of humans around the globe. This year’s events take on a special meaning as UNESCO has declared 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology.

To mark the occasion, a proclamation from Gov. Jared Polis in support of World Quantum Day (PDF) was read on the House and Senate floors of the General Assembly. CU Boulder was recognized for its contribution to the quantum industry.

“The collaborative efforts of higher education institutions, industry, and government agencies have played a pivotal role in nurturing Colorado's quantum technology ecosystem, fostering an environment conducive to research advancements, technology deployment to improve quality of life, and economic prosperity for Colorado and our global community,” the proclamation states.

Today, Colorado’s quantum industry employs about 3,000 people, and the state estimates that the number could grow to 10,000 within the next decade. In 2023, the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) named Elevate Quantum, a coalition of 120 organizations in the Mountain West, as an official tech hub for quantum technology. CU Boulder is a prime contributor to Elevate Quantum, which has secured more than $120 million to fuel the quantum industry in the region.

To begin the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology in January, CU Boulder—alongside Colorado State University, the Colorado School of Mines and Elevate Quantum—announced the launch of a new quantum incubator in Boulder.

CU Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz and other dignitaries joined the Colorado General Assembly in marking the rapid growth of the state's quantum industry.

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Campus releases latest Sexual Assault and Related Harms Survey results

Megan Maneval — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 18:36:11 +0000

Campus releases latest Sexual Assault and Related Harms Survey results Megan Maneval Mon, 04/14/2025 - 12:36

The newly released 2024 Sexual Assault and Related Harms Survey results show students reporting a slight increase in sexual assault compared to 2021, though the rate remained substantially lower than in 2015 when CU Boulder first conducted the survey. The latest survey shows a slight decrease in stalking and no statistically significant changes in sexual exploitation from 2021 to 2024, with rates for each of those metrics also remaining lower than in 2015.

CU Boulder’s Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance (OIEC) administered the survey during the fall 2024 semester to gather data about the prevalence of misconduct experienced by students on and off campus during their time at the university. It focused on sexual assault, harassment, exploitation, stalking and intimate partner abuse.

While a few of the main categories saw rates increase slightly from 2021 to 2024, the rates for four of the five remained significantly lower than in 2015. The slight increases from 2021 were not unexpected given that multiple factors—particularly COVID-19 pandemic-related influences such as campuses going remote, stay-at-home orders and general trends toward less socialization—contributed significantly to the large decreases in rates seen in the 2021 survey.

CU Boulder first surveyed in 2015 and then again in 2021. The university plans to administer the survey every four years going forward.

“While we’re encouraged that the results for most categories continue to trend lower than in 2015 and indicate that our campus prevention efforts since then have made a positive impact, we recognize that there is still much work to be done,” said Llen Pomeroy, vice chancellor for OIEC and the campus’s Title IX coordinator. “The data gathered in the latest survey will enable our campus experts to better understand current trends affecting our students so we can enhance and expand existing prevention practices and student support services.”

OIEC will continue to analyze the 2024 data throughout the coming months. OIEC will collaborate with the Office of Victim Assistance and the Sexual Misconduct Task Force, a representative advisory group, to identify opportunities for strengthening campus prevention and response efforts.

High participation, donations

Nearly 30% of all CU Boulder students participated in the 2024 Sexual Assault and Related Harms Survey, and students came through in a big way for important causes.

Students were offered a $10 incentive to participate in the survey, with an option to donate that incentive instead. Undergraduate student participants donated $12,300 to the Basic Needs Center, and graduate student participants donated $5,100 to the Graduate Student Emergency Aid Fund.

�鶹��Ƶ the survey

A total of 9,119 undergraduate and 2,383 graduate students completed the 2024 Sexual Assault and Related Harms Survey, with respective response rates of 28% and 29%. OIEC leads the survey design and implementation and is responsible for educating the CU Boulder community about, and addressing incidents of, discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct. OIEC also monitors prevalence by administering smaller-scale surveys focused on first-year undergraduate students, who are impacted the most, between the years when the full student body is surveyed.

Survey participants were asked whether they had experienced sexual assault and related harms since becoming a student at CU Boulder. The survey respondents were demographically representative of the student population, including in terms of participants’ race and ethnicity and their school or college.

The findings compiled in the new report compare prevalence rates from previous surveys in 2015 and 2021 to the 2024 results.

“Our goal has been to track where the campus has improved and where problems persist,” Pomeroy said. “Unfortunately, sexual assault and other gender-based harm are deeply entrenched social ills that disproportionately impact young people in the United States, making it difficult to eradicate these issues in the college environment. This underscores why tracking this data is so important in directing the strategies we deploy to prevent sexual misconduct.”

Survey data

The 2024 survey data indicates that 18% of undergraduate women reported being sexually assaulted since coming to CU Boulder, up from 15% in the 2021 data but still down from the 28% reported in 2015. Similar to 2015 and 2021, undergraduate men, graduate women and graduate men reported lower rates of sexual misconduct than undergraduate women for all categories.

Rates of sexual exploitation saw no statistically significant changes from 2021 to 2024 and remained lower in 2024 than in 2015 for all groups.

Stalking, which had stayed largely flat from 2015 to 2021, decreased in 2024 for undergraduate women by 5 percentage points, along with slight decreases for other groups.

OIEC will continue analyzing the data to understand how these issues impact our many university communities, including gender identity beyond the categories of women and men, sexual orientation and other key demographics like race and disability status.

New questions, new findings

The 2024 survey incorporated additional behaviors into the definitions of sexual harassment and intimate partner abuse based on new research and student feedback following the 2021 survey.

“We are constantly evolving the survey to capture a broad range of harms based on students’ lived experience,” said Julie Volckens, senior director of assessment and prevention for OIEC. “This included adding public behaviors such as catcalling to the sexual harassment section and expanding intimate partner violence to include academic, economic and technology-based abuse.”

Except for graduate men, compared to both 2015 and 2021 results, in 2024 there was a meaningful increase in reports of sexual harassment, especially among undergraduate women. Intimate partner abuse, meanwhile, saw increases from 2021 to 2024 but remained lower than in 2015 for all groups.

“Expanding the questions increased our ability to capture problematic behaviors that may have been occurring previously but weren’t detected in past surveys,” Volckens said.

Key trends

For those who indicated they experienced sexual assault, the survey asked questions about when the incident occurred, where it occurred, the characteristics of the perpetrator, whether the survey participant officially reported the incident, as well as personal consequences they may have experienced as a result of the incident.

Timing/characteristics

For undergraduates, the majority of assaults occurred in the fall semester.
For the majority of undergraduate and graduate students, the perpetrator(s) of sexual assault was someone they knew (a friend, casual dating partner or hookup, acquaintance or someone they just met, current or former dating partner).
As compared to 2021, there was an increase in the prevalence of a casual dating partner or hookup being indicated as the sexual assault perpetrator for both undergraduate and graduate students.

Resources

Location

For both undergraduate women and men, the majority of sexual assaults occurred in the same three locations in 2024 as compared to 2021: a Greek chapter house, someone else’s off-campus residence, and the student’s campus residence.

Although a Greek chapter house remained the most common location in 2024 (18% of sexual assault incidents among undergraduate women), this represents a substantial drop from the 2021 rate of 30%.

Consequences

Among undergraduate women, the majority indicated that they had experienced negative consequences from the sexual assault in addition to the incident itself. This included impact to their mental health (76%), intimate relationships (66%), feelings about their body (66%) and confidence in their abilities (52%). Almost half (46%) also reported that the sexual assault had made them less productive in their academic work.

Compared to 2021, a meaningfully smaller percentage of the 2024 survey participants reported experiencing negative outcomes from a sexual assault across all types of consequences measured in the survey: health, social, college and career, and academic. One reason for this could be that rates of students disclosing their experiences to another person—be it a roommate, friend or family member—remained high. Research has shown that receiving support can reduce the negative consequences experienced by survivors of sexual and interpersonal harm.

Peer institutions

Compared to AAU peer institutions that collected data pre- and post-pandemic, CU Boulder saw lower rates of sexual assault and a larger decrease since before the pandemic. AAU peer institutions saw pre-pandemic rates of sexual assault for women decrease from 32% before the pandemic to 24% in 2024, compared to CU Boulder’s decline from 28% pre-pandemic to 18% in 2024.

Looking forward, using the data

The Sexual Misconduct Task Force was formed after the 2021 survey was administered to thoroughly review and understand campus data and peer-reviewed research and help develop broad-based practices for reducing sexual harm against students.

The task force, guided by OIEC prevention staff, developed promising prevention strategies for students, faculty and staff to improve protective factors for the campus community and reduce harm.

The task force will continue its work in response to the survey analyses to support the implementation of comprehensive prevention practices.

While increasing slightly from 2021, rates of reported sexual assault remain substantially lower than in 2015, the first year CU Boulder conducted the survey. Stalking, meanwhile, continued to decline in the 2024 survey.

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Professor John Cumalat wins 2025 Hazel Barnes Prize

Megan Maneval — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:14:52 +0000

Professor John Cumalat wins 2025 Hazel Barnes Prize Megan Maneval Mon, 04/14/2025 - 09:14

Cumalat, a professor of distinction in the Department of Physics, "literally re-shaped our understanding of the fundamental particles making up the known universe," colleagues note.

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Get your game plan going for open enrollment

Megan Maneval — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 14:56:33 +0000

Get your game plan going for open enrollment Megan Maneval Mon, 04/14/2025 - 08:56

This year’s open enrollment period runs April 21–May 9. All benefits-eligible employees will have the opportunity to change their health plan enrollments, modify optional insurance policies and add or remove dependents.

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Jazz swings forward at CU Boulder thanks to Thompson endowment

Megan Maneval — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 19:17:06 +0000

Jazz swings forward at CU Boulder thanks to Thompson endowment Megan Maneval Thu, 04/10/2025 - 13:17

In the fall, alumni and longtime donors Jack and Jeannie Thompson expanded their endowment, adding a vocal jazz degree option to the Thompson Jazz Studies Program in CU Boulder’s College of Music.

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CMCI names its first endowed professor

Megan Maneval — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 18:20:10 +0000

CMCI names its first endowed professor Megan Maneval Thu, 04/10/2025 - 12:20

College of Media, Communication and Information

Casey Fiesler, whose perspectives on law and ethics in technology have given her national cachet, has been named the William R. Payden Endowed Professor at the College of Media, Communication and Information.

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Projects in water quality, brain health, quantum and more receive $900K

Megan Maneval — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 20:42:02 +0000

Projects in water quality, brain health, quantum and more receive $900K Megan Maneval Tue, 04/08/2025 - 14:42

Research & Innovation Seed Grants, awarded by CU Boulder's Research & Innovation Office, as well as the Office of the Provost, will fund 15 new projects for up to $60,000 each.

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Mark Borden, Mark Rentschler inducted into prestigious college of fellows

Megan Maneval — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 14:21:09 +0000

Mark Borden, Mark Rentschler inducted into prestigious college of fellows Megan Maneval Fri, 04/04/2025 - 08:21

College of Engineering and Applied Science

Professors Mark Borden and Mark Rentschler have been inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows. The program is among the highest professional distinctions given to medical and biological engineers, representing the top 2% of these engineers around the world.

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Faculty earn Air Force Young Investigator Awards

Megan Maneval — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 19:38:48 +0000

Faculty earn Air Force Young Investigator Awards Megan Maneval Thu, 04/03/2025 - 13:38

College of Engineering and Applied Science

Assistant Professors Kōnane Bay and Ankur Gupta from CU Boulder’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering each received three-year grant to advance research relevant to the U.S. Air Force.

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The spring Coloradan magazine is online

Megan Maneval — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 19:32:56 +0000

The spring Coloradan magazine is online Megan Maneval Thu, 04/03/2025 - 13:32

Sustainability Buffs are building with bricks made of algae, 3D-printing schools and more. Also in the latest issue of the Coloradan: the 100-year-old superfan Peggy Coppom, SpaceX astronaut Sarah Gillis, and an ode to the Dark Horse.

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Announcements & Deadlines

Celebrating World Quantum Day at the Colorado Capitol

Related Articles

Campus releases latest Sexual Assault and Related Harms Survey results

�鶹��Ƶ the survey

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