Those of us who have earned a college degree fully understand and appreciate its value, as well as its lasting, positive impact on our lives. Yet we don't always consider that while higher education certainly benefits individuals, it also provides substantial benefits to society. It is not just a private gain, but also a public good.
At the University of Colorado, we help drive Colorado's economy. We advance knowledge in ways that improve lives. We conduct research in fields important to our state, nation and world such as energy, health care, aerospace and biotechnology. We enhance the culture of our state.
One area where we provide value that people don't always consider is the work CU faculty, students, staff and alumni do in communities in every corner of Colorado -- urban and rural, large and small. To demonstrate the scope of our efforts, we have launched a new initiative, CU For Colorado.
CU is engaged in more than 230 programs across the state. They run the gamut in our key areas of focus: learning and teaching, discovery and innovation, community and culture, and health and wellness.
A few examples illustrate our reach and impact. The Center for Economic Education at our Colorado Springs campus promotes and improves the quality and quantity of economics education in K-12 schools across Colorado, each year serving some 2,000 teachers and thousands of their students.
The Colorado Public Health Training Center at CU Denver annually provides resources and training to more than 800 public health workers throughout the state, improving their skills and practices in health departments, community organization and health-care providers.
The CU-Boulder Law School's Colorado Law Constitution Day Project brings Colorado Law students, alumni, faculty and local attorneys to high school classrooms across the state to deliver interactive lessons on the Constitution. The related Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project places upper-level Colorado Law students in underserved high schools to join teachers to teach a class about the Constitution.
The renowned Mini Med School at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus is an eight-week program that offers Coloradans free one-hour courses in the basic science that underlies medicine. School of Medicine faculty, chosen for their abilities to make medicine understandable, cover topics such as immunology, molecular and cell biology, cancer and virology.
CU has dozens and dozens more examples of our positive impact on the state. We hope that in your travels or in your communities you will look for CU For Colorado signs, Web pages, brochures and other materials that highlight our activities. We also encourage you to keep up with CU For Colorado on Facebook and Twitter.
I'm proud of the work our students, faculty, staff and alumni do around Colorado. We value our community partners. And we're pleased that communities from Burlington to Grand Junction, from Trinidad to Fort Collins and hundreds of points in between have joined us to make our communities and our state better places.
When it comes to the public good, we all win.
For feedback, contact officeofthepresident@cu.edu
Sincerely,
Bruce Benson
President
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