President Benson speaks before Boulder citizens and CU students about the current state of the university in the Old Main Chapel on Wednesday, Oct. 20. (CU Independent/Kelly Kaoudis)
CU President Bruce Benson was accompanied by Chancellor Philip DiStefano, Provost Russell Moore and various deans on Wednesday, as he held a town hall meeting in the chapel of Old Main.
The meeting allowed for President Benson to address what the university’s administration has been focusing on this year, what challenges they are continuing to face and what they hope to achieve in the future.
“We are focusing our efforts on four key areas: learning and teaching, discovery and innovation, health and wellness, and community and culture,” Benson said.
He said that while some of the challenges the administration is working to push through seem straightforward, others do not.
“We face a lot of significant challenges,” Benson said. “A lot of these are outside of our control; some of this is within our control. We have addressed and will continue to address these problems in the coming years.”
The first issue he addressed was the predicted lack of funding for the next year.
“This coming year, it looks like $158 million is what they’re saying they’re quite sure we will get,” Benson said. “I’m not quite as confident about that. But we have to be ready for more cuts and problems that are coming to our budgets in the future.”
He described both the recent and expected funding cuts to be something he believes will not stop anytime soon. He said that despite these cuts, the CU community should be proud of its accomplishments.
“There is a statistic that Colorado is the most efficient higher education state in the country,” Benson said. “Keep that in mind and be proud of that.”
Constant reaffirmation of the importance of higher education is one way he believes the university can convince the state that continued funding is crucial, Benson said.
“When we talk about this university and our reputation, we have to make sure that the citizens understand and appreciate how important this university is to the state of Colorado, and that will help us get better funding,” Benson said.
He also said the administration is taking cues from students for ways in which to reinvent the various CU campuses.
“If you think about higher education, we’re really basically working off a model that’s been around for hundreds of years, and I think we have to think about how we do things differently,” he said. “I think the students are pushing toward some of these things, the online learning and stuff like that.”
He said the university has been working to further partnerships and collaborations, increase diversity and an international presence across campus and make residential life more affordable for students.
One way in which the administration has worked to become more efficient in these efforts has been through the creation of a Shared Services Committee that has aided in reducing administrative duplication across CU campuses, he said.
Following Benson’s address was the chance for discussion among the administrative leaders, and the students and community members who were present.
Mark Squillace, a law professor and the director of the Natural Resources Law Center, stood and shared how he and his colleagues were approached with a $5 million solicitation but did not have the resources to write the necessary proposal.
“The result, I think, is that we’re leaving a lot of money on the table,” Squillace said. “Here’s my suggestion: to have the office of research hire someone who could be responsible for bringing people together from different disciplines to draft proposals for these types of projects.”
Provost Moore responded by stating that this particular issue was one that needed to be addressed on an individual level and it could be difficult to get different groups together in that manner.
Douglas Duncan, an instructor in the astronomy department, also stood and said he believed there needed to be more aggression in pushing the importance of higher education.
“I just want to second and encourage you to be aggressive about getting out the message of the value of the university and a university education,” Duncan said. “I would love to see the message get out better.”
Benson answered by stating that he normally addresses the importance of a university education when he holds similar discussions, but that he felt it wasn’t necessary on CU-Boulder’s campus because it would have been “preaching to the choir.”
Julie Wong, the vice chancellor of student affairs, asked about ideas the president had for encouraging the presence of faculty of color.
“Are there ways in which you have thought about how to reward things that include faculty of color, which would help in including students of color?” Wong said.
Benson said that while he hadn’t given the idea much thought, he would in the future because he believed in the importance of cultivating a richly diverse campus through students and staff of color.
“We need people that the mentees would relate to and understand,” he said. “We understand that, and we’ve got to do a better job of getting a more diverse university throughout all our campuses.”
While there were many in attendance at Benson’s discussion, some students said they received the e-mail alert about it, but simply did not attend.
“[The e-mail] was just in my subject e-mail, and I didn’t really think about it,” said Shawn Pohlson, a 20-year-old junior media studies major.
Pohlson said she believes having diversity be a main focus for the administration is a good thought but would like to see results.
“I would definitely think that there should be a more diverse campus,” she said.
Benson closed the discussion by stating that education is a necessity for the state of Colorado, a role the university takes seriously.
“Education is the key to Colorado’s economic, social and cultural health,” he said. “I think it’s terribly important that we show people that.”
Contact CU Independent Breaking News Editor Sarah Simmons at Sarah.e.simmons@colorado.edu.
