How can CU Denver reach a thriving state by 2030?
More than 200 CU Denver faculty and staff grappled with this question on Oct. 21 and 22 at two communitywide Campus Conversations. The sessions elicited feedback about CU Denver’s Strategic Plan Refresh effort introduced by Chancellor Kenneth T. Christensen, PhD, in September.
Each session included academic and administrative leaders, as well as shared governance leaders, to reflect the continuing partnership between the areas. “CU Denver’s 2030 Strategic Plan originally came out five years ago, and a lot of you participated in its development,” said Staff Council Communications Co-Chair Tammy Hassan at the start of the Oct. 21 session. “Today, we have new leadership, new students, and a whole new world that we are living in. So much has changed since then, and it’s time to ensure the strategic plan fits our new environment.”
Campus leaders reiterated that the effort is a strategic plan refresh, not an overhaul, and that the five initial goals are of continuing importance. These leaders also noted that CU Denver’s retention, graduation, and career placement efforts, as well as budget challenges, warrant that we recalibrate how we describe the ways CU Denver will pursue success through 2030, with newly developed milestones and measures to gauge that success.
Strategic planning is an academic expertise of Faculty Assembly Chair and School of Public Affairs Associate Teaching Professor Wendy Bolyard, who told Oct. 22 attendees about research, which indicates that less than 10% of organizations successfully implement their strategy. “We don’t want to be among those 90%,” she said. “What strategic planning helps us get over is when the urgent becomes the enemy of the important. We have to stay focused on what’s important, even when we’re putting out fires in our daily work.”
At the Campus Conversations, attendees provided detailed insights about four core concepts Christensen introduced as a starting point for strategic dialogue. While event polls reflected general alignment with these core concepts, numerous reactions and suggestions were discussed and documented to better reflect the breadth of perspectives across campus.
A core Strategic Plan Operations Team (SPOT) will work with campus leaders to consider all these perspectives—and similar feedback from dozens of strategic conversations between now and the end of November—and to develop refreshed strategic plan goals, milestones, and success measures to be introduced to the CU Denver community in February 2026.
More information about this effort, including core concepts language and ways faculty and staff can submit feedback, can be found on this project webpage.
