High honors and awards - including Distinguished Professors and Boettcher Investigators - topped the list of 2024's news features in CU Connections, based on reader interest. See our Top 10 list for summaries and links to these highlights from the past 12 months.
Elected to her first term in 2018, Regent Lesley Smith had planned to spend this year running statewide for a second term as the board’s at-large member. And while she will indeed be taking an oath of office next month, it will be the one for her newly won seat in Colorado’s House District 49. “My scientific background is what drew me to the legislature,” said Smith, who spent nearly 30 years at CU Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences (CIRES). “But I also hope to be a strong voice at the Capitol for higher education."
Boasting a vivid kaleidoscope theme, the new University of Colorado annual donor report shares important financial highlights that underscore the...
Nine University of Colorado faculty members today are being named Distinguished Professors, CU’s highest honor for faculty across the system’s four campuses. CU Distinguished Professors are tenured faculty members who demonstrate exemplary performance in research or creative work; a record of excellence in promoting learning and student attainment of knowledge and skills; and outstanding service to the profession, the university and its affiliates.
The Board of Regents Finance Committee on Wednesday received some preliminary data on the CU system’s economic impact: $11.6 billion across the state last year, significant dividends of the four CU campuses delivering exceptional teaching, research, community engagement and health care. As detailed during the committee’s meeting held via webinar, the total economic impact grows to an even more impressive $19.3 billion when also factoring in CU’s two affiliate hospitals – UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital and Children’s Hospital Colorado – at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus. The figures come from a new study of the 2023-24 fiscal year completed by the Business Research Division of CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business.
Phillip De Leon, Ph.D., oversees the University of Colorado Denver’s research and creative activities mission, which has been traveling an upward trajectory in recent years. CU Denver’s $31.3 million in externally sponsored projects for fiscal year 2024 was up 10% over the previous year. “The strategic plan’s goal for international recognition of CU Denver’s research and creative work, and the Grand Challenges initiative, really elevated the research mission of CU Denver over the last few years and catalyzed our faculty,” he said.
