Published: Dec. 7, 2006

University of Colorado at Boulder Chancellor G.P. “Bud” Peterson today announced that the first meeting of the Steering Committee on Strategic Planning: Flagship 2030 will be held Saturday, Dec. 9, from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the Eaton Humanities Building on the CU-Boulder campus.

The committee of 53 people is composed of faculty, staff, students and administrators, along with key stakeholders from the community at-large. Its mission is to help guide the CU-Boulder community through a strategic planning process that will envision the Boulder campus's role as the state's flagship university in the year 2030.

“I'm grateful to this wonderful group of CU employees and university community stakeholders for their time,” said Peterson. “I'm hopeful that, by setting our sights a generation into the future, we can really think outside the box and envision the broadest possible scenarios for CU as the flagship campus for Colorado.”

The committee is divided into six sub-committees that Peterson has charged with tackling one of six fundamental questions centered on CU's flagship identity and responsibilities in 2030. They are:

1. What will our graduates need to know and be able to do in the year 2030?

2. To what needs of the year 2030 will our research, scholarship and creative efforts respond?

3. What will the State of Colorado need from us in the year 2030?

4. What should our relationship with the Boulder community be in the year 2030?

5. What kind of university community will we aspire to be in the year 2030?

6. What kind of financial and operational models will CU -Boulder need in order to succeed in 2030?

The committee on Saturday will receive a general session introduction from Peterson and CU-Boulder Senior Vice Chancellor Ric Porecca, as well as from project consultant Stuart Takeuchi, a former CU vice president. It will then break into its sub-committee groups to focus on the respective questions. The groups will meet at regular intervals throughout the winter and early spring to answer their key questions.

“This is a process designed for real and lasting results,” said Peterson. “We want to arrive at a blueprint for the future that will help ensure our mission as the state's flagship campus is closely tied to the fortunes of the state. We want to set visionary goals to work toward and then meet the challenge of transforming those goals into realities.”

As the steering committee members begin formulating a response to these questions, more input will be received from additional members of the university community. Called “core contributors,” these groups will join in the discussions and debates of the steering committees. They also will help to prepare a draft response to the questions that most interest them.

The results of the combined efforts of the steering committee and the core contributors will then be made available to the broader university community through a series of “position papers,” which will then be discussed in a number of open forums and via the Vision 2030 Web site, accessible through the CU-Boulder Web site. From these position papers, an action plan will be developed and presented to President Hank Brown next spring and Brown will submit it to the regents early next fall.

“The result of this work will be nothing less than defining CU's role as Colorado's flagship campus for the first century of the new millennium,” said Peterson. “That is a goal that I think is worthy of CU-Boulder's long visionary legacy - in fact, I believe this process is helping us to write the next exciting chapter in that legacy.”

For more information on the Vision 2030 plan overview, process and other topics go to: .