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The Buff Undergraduate Success (BUS) team, charged with improving undergraduate student success, is collaborating with faculty, staff and units from across the CU Boulder community to identify and implement programs, policies and processes that will increase retention, help students earn their degrees on time and create a campus community where undergraduate students feel like they belong.

During September and October, the BUS team launched a that begins to consolidate student support and resource information on the and enables students to for non-mandatory campus communications.

The BUS team developed a first-year student success dashboard that consolidates data from entities across campus that may provide timely information for advisors, coaches and others in positions of support to help students stay on track. The dashboard will be in use by fall 2023.

The BUS team also finished an inventory and conducted interviews to assess needs, challenges and opportunities with CU Boulder tutoring; launched a more personalized tutoring experience in Buff Portal; and made progress on identifying affinity spaces on campus and on streamlining the review and approval process for late course withdrawals. 

The BUS team is committed to completing the following initiatives by the end of 2022:

• A pilot within selected College of Arts & Sciences departments to speed up the evaluation of transfer credits.
• A design for a new advising experience for newly admitted Alternative College Option students.
• A request for proposal for a new degree audit platform.
• A centralized, published directory of affinity spaces campuswide.
• A draft first-year student success dashboard for review and comment.
• Replacing the defunct Minimum Academic Preparation Standards, or MAPS, with campus-level and school/college-level recommendations for undergraduate admission, in line with the revised , University of Colorado Guidelines for Undergraduate Admission.
• Updating the campus eCommunications policy.
• Supporting the Boulder Faculty Assembly’s sponsorship of a vote by faculty governance groups on learning objectives and outcomes for a campuswide common undergraduate curriculum.  
• Centrally publicizing all campus tutoring centers.
• Soliciting ideas from students on the newly launched student communications model.
• Soliciting review and comment on the draft first-year student success dashboard.

We want to hear from you

The BUS team encourages campus engagement and welcomes your ideas for improving undergraduate student success. Visit the Buff Undergraduate Success page for more information and to share your ideas.

Common Curriculum Planning Committee submits proposal, seeks ideas 

The Common Curriculum Planning Committee, charged with creating a common learning experience and a common set of learning outcomes for all CU Boulder undergraduate students, submitted its final proposal to Provost Russell Moore in early October. The proposal is the culmination of a campus listening tour of more than 80 departments, student groups and student support groups in spring 2021, and a year of work and discussions within the committee, including opportunities for the campus community to provide ideas on a draft proposal.

The Boulder Faculty Assembly has designed an approval process that entails a vote in the faculty governance group of each school and college that teaches undergraduate students, with the voting process wrapping up before the fall break. On Nov. 3, the BFA will discuss on the common curriculum.

Throughout October, the planning committee’s co-chairs, Katherine Eggert, senior vice provost for academic planning and assessment, and Daryl Maeda, dean and vice provost for undergraduate education, presented the proposal to all of these faculty governance groups to hear thoughts and answer questions.

An implementation team will be formed by the end of the semester. The team will begin mapping the common curriculum goals and learning outcomes onto existing degree programs in the spring. Ultimately, the common curriculum will be under the purview of a campuswide faculty curriculum committee.

The Common Curriculum Planning Committee seeks faculty and staff interested in serving on the implementation team. Email the committee if you’d like to be considered.