Dear CU Denver community,

We are pleased to announce this morning that CU Denver’s core curriculum—the common foundation of learning for undergraduates—will undergo some structural updates in the near future. This will help it better serve the needs of our learning experience, the imperatives of our workforce and, most importantly, the priorities of our students. 

This announcement follows an April faculty vote to pass a proposal for structural updates to the core—with more than 80% of eligible faculty who voted casting “yes” votes. The final proposal was based on a yearslong, community-wide process led by a Reimagining the Core Curriculum working group as part of the university’s Academic Transformation initiative.  

Primary features of the new core curriculum structure include:

• 31 required credits (compared with 34-40 currently)
• Alignment with GT Pathways, Colorado’s general education curriculum
• Newly articulated objectives and learning outcomes
• Potential for thematic focuses that could enable credentialing as a certificate

More detailed information on these changes can be found on an FAQ and the full proposal housed on this page. 

This vote sets CU Denver on a path to make our core curriculum more transfer-friendly, career-centric, and flexible for students, as CU Denver prepares for a projected rollout to some students in fall 2027. And it reflects a strong endorsement by our faculty in their management of important curricular decisions on behalf of CU Denver. The vote was the first CU Denver facultywide vote on any issue in more than a decade.

A supplemental faculty vote, on whether an existing requirement for a one-credit lab should be made optional, did not pass: 49.8% of faculty voted yes on the proposal, falling short of the two-thirds majority required for a vote of the full faculty. 

Next Steps

From here, the proposal moves to the Core Curriculum Oversight Committee (CCOC), which will work with stakeholders throughout the 2026-27 academic year, and CCOC co-chairs Kirsten Christensen and Ruben Anguiano are prepared to lead the implementation of the proposal. Progress will be reported at regular intervals during the 2026-27 academic year. 

A Community-Engaged, Community-Responsive Process

One especially notable aspect of this effort is that the final proposal is a product of extensive community engagement, from dozens of stakeholder group meetings, to thoughtful proposal updates made in recent months to address considerations raised by faculty members.  

We also recognize that there are some who continue to ask legitimate questions about how this will be implemented and what the impacts will be. We recognize that much work is ahead before our revised core curriculum is ready for students, and we commit to remaining attentive to and addressing unanticipated impacts along the way. 

Meanwhile, we want to pause to recognize the strong vote of support our faculty have expressed to help our students succeed. A special thank you to the Reimagining the Core Curriculum working group, and most especially to project leaders Michelle Comstock and antwan jefferson. Under CCOC's guidance, Michelle and antwan will continue to help CU Denver evolve to provide pathways for our students that reflect the intent and the spirit of a model core curriculum. 

Karen Marrongelle
Provost

Wendy Bolyard
Faculty Assembly Chair