海角社区

Jan. 31, 2023

Dear colleagues,

Welcome to the spring 2023 semester! I hope your courses and projects are off to a strong start as we wrap up the first month of the year after a couple of holidays and a lot of snow. As always, there is a lot going on at 海角社区, and I want to provide a high-level overview of some pertinent topics for faculty and staff.

We have several new Roadrunner leaders, starting with trustee appointees and . They jumped right in at last week鈥檚 board meetings, and I鈥檓 thrilled about what they bring to our hardworking board. Interim Chief Financial Officer officially started this month, and he鈥檒l be integral to our new strategic budgeting process. With Chief Enrollment Officer and Chief Strategy Officer coming on board last semester and named to lead the College of Aerospace, Computing, Engineering and Design and the College of Health and Human Sciences, respectively, we have a stalwart leadership team in place to help us LAUNCH! this year.

On the legislative front, I visited the state鈥檚 Joint Budget Committee this month to present our for an increase of $144.7 million in state operating funding and 4% in tuition authority. Colorado is 49th in the country in state funding per student, and our request makes it clear that that is inadequate to meet the state鈥檚 long-term strategic goals. That funding request would translate to approximately $13 million more for 海角社区鈥檚 base funding, dependent on enrollment, and would help us cover core minimum-cost increases, including inflation and employee-compensation increases.

Spring enrollment is still firming up, but the latest numbers show our undergraduate student head count as 14,596 (2.4% lower year-to-year) and graduate student head count as 1,069 (down 3.3%). Full-time equivalents from undergraduate lower-level courses are down less than 2%, but FTEs from upper-level courses are down 6% relative to spring 2022. All the while, new registered undergrad students are up almost 17%! This shows that we鈥檙e getting new students on campus, but they鈥檙e not persisting as well as we鈥檇 like. We鈥檙e keeping a close eye on these numbers and will talk more about them and our 鈥淪tuff That Works鈥� initiatives to support retention at on March 2.

海角社区鈥檚 Health Institute Simulation Labs project that the state funded is on schedule, which is exciting after all the hard work we鈥檝e put into the academic alignment of the Health Institute. You can learn all about the Sim Labs project on the and see which campus departments are moving around to accommodate construction. Thank you for your flexibility as we work on this transformative project!

I also want to thank everyone for their efforts getting up and running and for your patience as we sort out the kinks on a great platform that is going to improve so many of our processes. Make sure you鈥檝e logged in and are learning your way around this semester.

To keep tabs on all these major initiatives, I encourage you to read the regularly, especially Larry Sampler鈥檚 columns with the latest operational updates. You can also connect with me through the or follow me on , or . I鈥檇 love to hear from you!

Lastly, here are some events to look forward to this semester:

• 
  Various events in February
• Denver Mayoral Debate
  Feb. 16 | 7-9 p.m. | King Center Concert Hall
• 
  Various events in March
• 
  March 2 | 8:45-10 a.m. | King Center Concert Hall
• 
  March 7-8 | Tivoli Turnhalle and Shorter Community AME Church
• 
  March 30 | All day
• 
  Various events in April
• 
  May 12 | 9:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. | Denver Coliseum

Thanks for all you do in service of our students!

Sincerely,

Janine Davidson, Ph.D.
President