Dear members of the Lynx community, 

Spring has arrived on the CU Denver campus and with it has come our Centennial State’s many perennial blooms. Symbols of rebirth and hope, perennials survive through the changing seasons, returning year after year, and bring their beauty to our gardens, fields, and mountainsides.

As our campus transitions from winter to the wonderment of spring, we, too, are awash in celebration and new beginnings. Like perennials, we thrive amid an ever-changing environment. Whether it has been through a departmental, college, or a campuswide gathering, I hope you’ve had the opportunity to celebrate the achievements of our students, faculty, and staff in the 2024-25 academic year.

These celebrations extend through our spring commencement, which is less than two weeks away. More than 2,000 students will cross the stage and flip their tassels in front of their peers, families, and faculty mentors, with one-third of them being the first in their family to earn a degree. Our graduates represent 40 states, extending from our home in Colorado, westward to California, Oregon, and Washington, through the mountains, plains, and Great Lakes, eastward to Maine, and down the Atlantic coast to Florida. Families of graduates from more than 70 countries will also celebrate across the globe. More than 100 veterans will earn degrees. And nearly 100 graduates will earn their doctorates.

As we celebrate this semester’s graduates, we also continue working to strengthen our comprehensive approach to student success. Every student who comes to CU Denver deserves the assurance that we will do everything possible to support them in crossing the same commencement stage as that of our spring graduates. Over the past three months, I have learned about so many impactful programs which are already driving successful student outcomes. We should study these programs to learn what can be replicated across our schools and colleges to broaden the impact of best practices being cultivated and refined by our faculty and staff.

One particular highlight was seeing the transformational work being done by the Learning Assistants Program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Learning Assistants are undergraduates who, after succeeding in their STEM courses, are recruited by faculty to support their peers in finding similar success through small group discussion, student-centered learning resources, and accessible one-on-one time. The Learning Assistants Program has successfully reduced withdrawals and failures in gateway courses in biology and chemistry, making a degree and graduation in the sciences more attainable for all who participate.

As we look for new strategies to implement, our partnership with the National Institute for Students Success (NISS) is contributing ideas for how we can improve student well-being, academic success, and career readiness. NISS has a proven track record in helping institutions with profiles similar to ours achieve transformational and sustainable growth in student success. I’m excited to announce that in the coming days, Interim Provost Pamela Jansma and I will invite our campus community to participate in town halls and working groups to learn more about the detailed findings and recommendations from NISS. I have spent a lot of time digesting the assessment and my greatest takeaway has been the recommendation that we develop a campuswide standard of care in how we support students on their journey to CU Denver, through to graduation, and beyond.

To harken back to my prior analogy, the NISS report and my own experience at CU Denver so far makes clear that there are seeds of success in bloom throughout campus—but to continue to improve student outcomes, we must take collective action to establish a campuswide baseline of excellence.

With that in mind, I’m excited to share a set of recent campus briefs which highlight the value of our mission and the impact that our approach is having in solving complex problems—of all sizes—within our Denver community and beyond.

Carrie Makarewicz, associate professor and chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning was recently featured on 9NEWS to lend her expertise on the health, sustainability, and equity impacts to be considered in the potential development of the Santa Fe Yards for the Denver National Women’s Soccer League stadium. Thank you to Carrie for serving as a subject matter expert and advocating on such an important planning and environmental issue for metro Denver.

The CU Denver admissions team, led by assistant director Jaime Alvarez, recently hosted a group of 35 students from Northeast Early College as part of the Leaping Lynx dual enrollment pathway pilot program. During the visit, students toured the campus and had the opportunity to attend the annual Research and Creative Activities Symposium (RaCAS). Kudos to the admissions team for leveraging the symposium and exposing perspective scholars to the very best of our student-led research.

The College of Engineering, Design and Computing’s Civil Engineering Club, which just recently launched, competed in the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Student Steel Bridge Competition and finished in third place. Each team had to develop a model that could span 20 feet, carry 2,500 pounds, and be assembled in less than 30 minutes. Check out this video to see the fabrication team at work. Congratulations on your achievements and for showcasing what is possible when we apply our academic best practices to solve real-world problems!

This is my final Lynx Link of the academic year, although I will continue to share monthly updates throughout the summer. As we head into another new season, I want to remind you that we plan to return in the fall with a renewed focus on CU Denver’s strategic plan, the outcomes we intend to have realized in 2030, and how we can best achieve our shared vision and goals. I encourage you to spend time in the months between now and then thinking deeply about how to best make this possible and the ways in which we can all meaningfully contribute to Make Education Work for All and reinforce CU Denver as our city’s higher education anchor in workforce, economic development, and community engagement.

I know there will continue to be interest in the coming weeks and months about the impacts of changes at the federal level. All relevant news will be shared through the CU System Federal Transition Updates website, and we may also send additional communications, which will be archived on our CU Denver Federal Updates  website, as circumstances require. There are a lot of proposals in Washington that could influence the way we work, but please recognize that these must go through our system of governance (including Congress weighing in on last week’s executive branch budget proposal, for example). We can often only guess which will come to fruition, when, and in what form. Please know that we are closely monitoring proposals and changes alike to understand and advise our community on the potential impacts.

In closing, I wanted to offer one final congratulations to all our spring 2025 graduates! The path you charted to meet your graduation moment exemplifies what is possible when our campus works toward a shared goal. As you push forward to meet your moment, we must not forget that our impact is greatest when we work together.