As a new academic year begins, I am awed by the energy, excitement, and anticipation around me at CU-Boulder. In all my years here 鈥� I now begin my 42nd听year on campus 鈥� it never ceases to amaze me how the start of the new academic year brings out the best in our community.
That spirit was demonstrated in full during move-in, where the great collective effort of our students, faculty and staff was focused on welcoming around 6,000 new freshmen 鈥� our largest new class ever 鈥� to campus. Every parent of a new freshman I encountered on campus last Wednesday and Thursday was effusive in praising how smoothly and efficiently the move-in process went. This response was typical: 鈥淔rom the incredible parking directions to the welcoming volunteers, students, RAs and more, it was such an easy, welcoming, stress-free process.听People even carried some of our boxes and clothes?! WOW!鈥�
Wow, indeed. That outcome came, I realize, at a significant sacrifice of convenience as we closed our parking lots to employees and asked our community to utilize telecommuting, alternative transportation and off-the-main-campus parking alternatives. I am sincerely grateful to each of you for not only cooperating with this approach, but embracing it. Your commitment to our new freshmen laid the foundation for them to begin their journey of curiosity and discovery at CU-Boulder with confidence.
Our task now is to continue in that same spirit, supporting the vital spark of curiosity that fuels our faculty, inspires our staff and that sits at the center of our students鈥� experience here.
As I told our new freshmen at convocation last Friday, they share that curiosity as a driver of their lives with great minds like Stephen Hawking, and with CU鈥檚 greatest minds: our Nobel laureates, our past, present and future astronauts, our faculty from more than 150 disciplines.
As those lives demonstrate, curiosity requires commitment.
Commitment from students, first and foremost, to be true to the process of learning and discovering. To do the hard work, ask the difficult questions, repeat the needed experiments, double-check the data and re-write the term paper.
Commitment from our faculty to teach with passion and conviction, with high expectations but also with abundant humanity.
Commitment from staff to support students and faculty, to innovate and to find new and better ways to serve and assist.
Commitment from me and my administration to support the vital work of students, faculty and staff. To find and place resources where they are needed. To see that curiosity is nurtured and elevated at all points in the campus community. To ensure that our learning environment supports fairness, justice, and equality, and is cultivated with respect for all.
I see that commitment lived out every day at CU-Boulder, and I am assured and heartened to see it begin anew this week. So let me again offer my thanks to our staff, faculty and students for a very successful move-in and Fall Welcome, and my fervent hopes to our students, new and returning, graduate and undergraduate, that our curiosity and commitment continue to define us in the year to come as they have for nearly 140 years.