Dear Lynx community, 

As we begin the new year and our spring semester, I hope the winter break offered each of you time to rest, recharge, and, most importantly, to connect with your family and those closest to you. 

When we departed in December, our university was focused on a central question: What will it mean and what will it take to be widely acknowledged as the Denver metro area’s higher education partner? As I noted in last week’s community update on the Strategic Plan Refresh, your feedback was clear and candid. It reaffirmed our collective commitment to learner well-being and academic excellence, values that will continue to define CU Denver and inform how we engage with those we serve.

In response, updated core concepts and a set of outcome metrics to measure our progress have been developed and are now available for review on our Strategic Plan Refresh webpage. I invite you to share your perspective through a final round of feedback, which will be collected through the end of January.

After such extensive internal reflection, it’s important we do not lose sight of the broader impact of our work. During administrative unit visits last fall, I spoke often about learner placement as a core measure of our public service obligation.

Historically, higher education has treated placement, whether that be enrollment into graduate study or employment, as a secondary outcome to the academic experience. Whatever its past rationale, this stance, in my view, is not defensible today.

This issue is especially consequential for our state and our university. Although Colorado leads the nation with nearly 63% of residents aged 25 to 64 holding a postsecondary certificate, credential, or degree, only one in four high school graduates enrolls immediately and completes a postsecondary credential within six years. Our state’s college-going rate, which refers to the immediate enrollment in college after high school, is under 50%, which lags 10 percentage points below the national average. This persistent disconnect, first coined nearly a decade ago, is known as the Colorado Paradox.

For years, our state has addressed this gap by importing talent from elsewhere. But with the COVID-era migration behind us, and with housing and living costs now outpacing incomes, Colorado was listed for the first time since 1990 as a high outbound state by the 2025 National Movers Study.

While concerning, I see in every challenge an opportunity. To support continued economic growth and prosperity, Colorado will continue to need a skilled, adaptable, and educated workforce. CU Denver, alongside other institutions across the state, must meet this moment by inspiring those who already reside here to pursue opportunity—whether through traditional degrees, credentials, or retraining—and to make it accessible, affordable, and valuable.

Through investments, such as CU Denver Direct, and through our renewed focus on student success, more learners will successfully matriculate into and through our programs. And through our academic program viability work, we will also ensure a clearer and more aligned connection between learning and placement.

In creating success for our learners and for Colorado, CU Denver will strengthen its financial sustainability—enabling reinvestment in our people and our research—and increase engagement with the communities we serve. In this way, our progress becomes a virtuous cycle. As our learners and region benefit, so too will you and our university.

The opportunity before us is evident throughout our Strategic Plan Refresh—from a focus on learner success, to investments in research and discovery, to our commitment to innovation and excellence in all that we do.

There has never been a more consequential or exciting time to be part of the Lynx community. With ambition for what lies ahead, and grounded in the work before us today, I invite you to join me for our hybrid event on Feb. 18 at 2 p.m. in the Jake Jabs Event Center as we formally launch the 2030 Strategic Plan Refresh.

I remain inspired by your energy and curiosity to improve learner outcomes and advance the mission of our university. We are proudly urban serving, community focused, and workforce aligned. Together, we will embrace the challenges ahead, strive for excellence, and make this semester a milestone in our shared journey to reaching the goals of our 2030 Strategic Plan Refresh.