But first, I would like to make a few quick introductions.

My wife, Yvonne, and our two daughters Jennifer and Nicole.

I would also like to introduce some familiar faces who are new members of the leadership team at CU-Boulder. Please help me welcome:

Stein Sture, Interim Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.

Russell Moore, Interim Vice Chancellor for Research.

John Stevenson, Interim Dean of the Graduate School.

Allow me to re-introduce my Senior Advisor, Joey White, whom I was able to talk out of retirement.

I also would like to acknowledge the other very able members of the leadership team

Ric Porreca, Senior Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer

Sallye McKee Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement

John Sleeman, Managing Senior Associate Counsel

Michael Warden, Associate Vice Chancellor for Strategic Communications

Carolyn Whitehead, Vice President for the CU Foundation

Julie Wong, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs

And I'd like to acknowledge two others who are not here: Frank Bruno, Vice Chancellor for Administration, who had a prior commitment today and new Boulder Faculty Chair Joe Rosse.

With the quality and excellence of our leadership team in mind, I would like to make a couple of important announcements. First, we will soon begin a national search for provost/executive vice chancellor for academic affairs. I'll be appointing a search committee chaired by one of our deans. We will not hire a search firm in these austere times we are in financially This search has nothing to do with my confidence in Interim Provost Sture and I sincerely hope that Stein will be a candidate for the permanent position. In the last two major searches—for President and for Chancellor—there was only a sole finalist. Faculty have told me in both searches, that they would have liked to have had more than one candidate to interview. To address faculty concerns I decided on a national search for the position of provost.

In addition, I am meeting with the Board of Directors of the Alumni Association this month to launch a search for the Executive Director of the Alumni Association this fall. Interim Executive Director Ron Stump has served in this position after more than a decade as Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, and Ron, I want to thank you for your service and leadership. Thank you very much.

Today, I would particularly like to welcome faculty and staff who may be new to the CU community. I would like to start by welcoming our 68 new faculty. It is gratifying to see that we were able to attract so many top-flight faculty from other top universities, re-confirming for me that we have something very special to offer at CU-Boulder.

Thirty-six years ago this fall I was a new faculty member myself at CU-Boulder. I have had many long-time friends and colleagues on campus. I'm not sure how many other chancellors can say that in this age of mobility, but I am truly grateful to be here among so many friends and supporters.

I would like to take a minute to relish what we have accomplished as a university community in recent weeks and months. While the list is long, I have selected a very few highlights.

Today, we have an enrollment of 30,196 students, the most ever in the history of our university. This tells me that we are a coveted place to study—for we graduate not just good students but good citizens. This also tells me that we continue to hold our value in these difficult economic times. The enrollment numbers include important gains over last year in the total number of graduate students as well as undergraduate and graduate students of color.

We also have 5,519 new freshmen, including nearly 900 students of color. I would like to thank Admissions Director Kevin MacLennan and his staff in Admissions for once again giving us another strong, diverse, and academically talented class.

I also would like to thank Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement Sallye McKee and the ODECE staff for their efforts in ensuring that diversity is a foundation of our university.

Faculty and staff worked very hard to find courses, seats and beds for all of our new students. Thank you for your hard work and long hours. I would also like to particularly acknowledge the work of the Arts and Sciences faculty and staff, Continuing Education, the Advising Center and room scheduling, to accommodate the students.

I also want to thank our talented staffs in Student Affairs, the Office of the Dean of Students, and Housing and Dining Services for finding housing for all these new students, and doing so with a residence hall out of commission for renovations.

Our outstanding staff always comes through at crunch time to keep the university running. This was truly a team effort in the name of the university, and with our students as our first consideration. My great thanks goes out to all of you.

While our enrollment is certainly good news, there is more to celebrate as we begin the new academic year.

In August we announced a record for campus federally sponsored research of $340 million, breaking last year's record by $60 million! This points out that our faculty is doing relevant, essential, life-saving work. This revenue supports the work of many hundreds of graduate students and also undergraduates who participate in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

Many are aware that we opened our second Residential College this fall in which upper-class students live and study in residential halls with first-year students. Associate Professor Scot Douglass moved into the renovated Andrews Hall with his family to lead 229 new and returning undergraduates in the Engineering Honors Program, which he directs. Thank you Scot for doing that.

Despite the economy, we nearly matched our 2008 fundraising record of last year, with the help of our partners at the CU Foundation. I want to thank CU Foundation Vice President Carolyn Whitehead and her staff for all of their hard work, along with the Vice Chancellors Deans, Directors and Development Officers. Thank you Carolyn.

We attracted a record 23 new graduate students who received prestigious National Science Foundation fellowships. These are students who could have studied at any U.S. or foreign institution of graduate research, and they each chose CU-Boulder. Typically we have seven or eight new NSF fellows each year. This is a wonderful testament to the quality of our graduate programs and it is certainly in-step with our Flagship 2030 goal of improving graduate education.

CU-Boulder has also become a national leader in working to advance Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education through a number of initiatives between departments in Arts & Sciences, the College of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of Education. These initiatives promote a new model of active learning in our classrooms and recruitment of some of our best science and mathematics students to the K-12 teaching profession.

And, it is exciting to realize that CU-Boulder is becoming known as an entrepreneurial university. The Deming Center for Entrepreneurship has been ranked in the Top 20 among national entrepreneurship programs by U.S. News and World Report every year this decade for both its graduate and undergraduate programs. Entrepreneurship also can be seen in our Silicon Flatirons program in the School of Law, the College of Engineering and Applied Science, the College of Music and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. And it is a foundation of our new Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute in partnership with NREL that we announced this summer, led on our campus by Professor Carl Koval.

We broke ground on the Caruthers Biotechnology Building and the Institute of Behavioral Sciences. The Visual Arts Complex and the Center for Community are quickly rising. All these great new educational and research facilities are symbols of our future. Many people, including the CU Foundation and the development officers have worked very hard on these projects.

Our legacy of environmentalism and sustainability received another boost when Sierra Magazine recently rated us the No. 1 green campus. This is due to an ethic that is ever-present throughout all quarters of our campus community but I would like to especially mention our Environmental Center and its director Dave Newport and his staff, for their leadership.

When it comes to the global challenge of climate change, CU-Boulder is seen as an international leader. While we have some of the world's top scientists and engineers to fight this battle, this monumental challenge cannot be solved alone with scientists and engineers.

Policy makers from the social sciences and the law school are developing the right policies for our governments. Psychologists and others from the behavioral sciences are studying necessary behavioral changes in the use of energy. Faculty from the Leeds School are developing business plans that move the ideals of sustainability from the boardroom to the marketplace. Ethicists from the humanities are finding ways for everyone to benefit from a sustainable society, making the ideal of social justice a reality. This is what a top comprehensive research university has the power to do and this is what we are seeing today at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

This well-rounded totality of education, research and contribution from so many areas is one reason why CU-Boulder is once again ranked in the Top 34 among public universities by U.S. News and World Report.

We can all take pride in the recognition we are receiving for our hard work.

The campus is currently preparing for reaccreditation by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association. Every 10 years we are asked to demonstrate how we are accomplishing our role and mission through a nationally recognized accreditation process. This examination by an outside panel of our peers comes at a very opportune time. With our Flagship 2030 strategic plan in place, we have clearly identified who we are and where we are going. As part of the reaccreditation process, we have prepared a comprehensive Self Study Report which describes our programs, policies and practices and builds upon Flagship 2030.

I want to thank the more than 70 members of the Steering Committee for Reaccreditation, many of whom I see here today, for contributing to the writing and editing of the Self Study Report. The final draft of the report is currently posted on the accreditation website and is available at colorado.edu/accreditation. I expect the final Self Study Report will be printed and posted by November 6.

The 14 consultant-evaluators who make up the Higher Learning Commission's Site Team are scheduled to visit CU-Boulder in late February 2010. Many of you will be asked to meet with members of this Site Team. This is truly a campus-wide effort, so I hope you will participate fully in this important process.

I promised you today that I would update you on the progress of our Flagship 2030 strategic plan. The words "Flagship 2030" have been on the lips of most people on campus for three years now. That's when we began formulating our strategic plan with great input from the community, the statewide public and the members of this campus.

Of course these are not just words, they are the blueprint for our future, near and far. This is not a plan made to look pretty and destined to sit on a shelf. It's an essential map of where we are and where we are going as we prepare our students for career and contribution for the 21st century global economy.

In Flagship 2030, we as a community arrived at eight core initiatives to keep us competitive with our AAU peers and 10 transformational initiatives to make us a model flagship university for the 21st century. The Board of Regents approved the plan in Fall 2007. Last fall, nine action task forces presented recommendations for implementation of the initiatives.

Over the last year and throughout the summer, the vice chancellors and I have been prioritizing these campus recommendations for near-term implementation in the next 18 to 36 months with an eye on today's budget situation. Two weeks ago, we presented our findings to the deans and the senior leadership and I want to share them with you.

Recommendations for near-term implementation can be found on the Flagship 2030 web site. However, for today, I have selected a few areas that I believe will improve the quality of education and will have a strong possibility of generating new revenue in these budget challenged times. Some of them will certainly require an investment—a one-time cash infusion to jumpstart them. We want to keep moving forward and position this campus for the future, even in these difficult economic times.

The areas we want to focus on in the near-term are:

• Faculty Hiring and Retention
• Curriculum Enhancements
• Advancing the Graduate Mission
• Developing a New Research Model
• Internationalizing the Campus
• Serving the State of Colorado
• Investing in our Staff
• Information Technology
• Planning and Constructing Facilities
• Developing a New Budget Model

In the time we have today, I would like to talk briefly about four of these areas:

• Curriculum Enhancements
• Serving Colorado
• Internationalizing the Campus
• Investing in Our Staff

Curriculum Enhancements is key to our future as we continue to position ourselves as a model flagship university. This includes expanding the Residential Academic Programs and Residential Colleges that we have become known for. And it includes expanded experiential education opportunities like internships, study abroad, service learning, undergraduate research, and portfolios of creative work.

In order to incorporate experiential education into the curriculum I have asked Provost Sture to work with the deans to review core curriculum, major requirements, graduation requirements and general electives to accommodate 3 to 6 credits in the curriculum for the entering freshman class of 2012.

These programs not only heighten the quality of the educational experience for our students but they also have the potential to produce revenue. We know that some of these programs are very attractive to both non-resident and resident students. Certainly there will be a cost to expanding these programs but we believe that they will attract students and increase our revenue stream.

Serving the State of Colorado refers to our outreach to communities around the state. In traveling around the state this summer meeting with alums, donors and community leaders from Lamar to Durango, it was clear to me that citizens aren't aware of the outreach we are doing in their communities and around the state of Colorado. In reality CU-Boulder serves 230,000 Coloradans in 37 counties with its outreach programs ranging from water quality issues to K-12 education.

So today, I am announcing that Anne Heinz, Dean for Continuing Education and Professional Studies, has accepted additional responsibilities as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Outreach and Engagement. Taking on this added role, Anne will focus on advancing the recommendations detailed in the Flagship 2030 Task Force on Outreach and Engagement, which she co-chaired. Anne, thank you very much for taking this additional responsibility on.

Further, we are establishing a Council on University Relations to improve the visibility of our outreach programs, sharpen our messages to internal and external audiences, and promote better understanding of the university's role and value throughout the state.

Internationalizing the Campus lends richness to the campus and is a bonus economically. It allows students to interact with students from other cultures and share perspectives as they prepare for a life of career and contribution in a global society.

We want to increase the number of international students on campus. Our goal is to have 10 percent of the student population as international students in the next five years. So we are pursuing legislation to allow an increase of international students without limitation of current non-resident enrollment restrictions.

In addition, we would like to increase the number of students who participate in study abroad from 28 percent to half of all bachelor-degree recipients in the next five years.

The last—but certainly not least—of these areas I want to mention today is Investing in Our Staff. This is one of the most important things we can do to realize our Flagship 2030 initiative of "supporting our mission."

The vice chancellors and I have monitored areas of critical need and have allocated additional staff positions as needed. One recent example is the hiring of six additional officers in the CU Police Department to maintain safety including a new platoon patrol system that will put more officers on the streets during critical hours of the day.

Another example is additional positions in the Office of Contracts and Grants to keep pace with faculty proposals for federal stimulus money. So far, we have earned 106 awards totaling $66 million for economic stimulus projects that will conduct studies ranging from the diagnosis of learning disabilities, to adolescent health, to cancer research.

And finally, I have asked Vice Chancellor Frank Bruno to consider our long-term commitment to childcare and to explore the possibility of a facility on the East Campus in our master planning process.

But even as we move ahead with Flagship 2030, it is fair to say that the loss of state funding is a major concern to all of us. Over the past year, it seems we have heard one round of bad news after another as state tax revenues continue to decline and state support of higher education continues to dwindle. As the state continues to balance its budget, the CU-Boulder share of budget reductions continues to grow.

This is not unique to us in Colorado. Every college and university in the state and in the nation faces these same realities. One need only turn to peer universities such as the University of Arizona, University of California or the University of Florida and Washington to see great institutions like CU facing deep cuts in programs and services.

Here is the reality: With strong enrollment this fall, we are fiscally healthy in the current year, but we have significant budget challenges facing us as a result of the rescission of state tax support which will become due over the next 18 months.

Declining state revenues during the recession have already caused us to implement a $12.9 million budget reduction on July 1 of this year. With continuing state revenue shortfalls, and even with backfilling this year and next with stimulus funding thanks to the efforts of Governor Ritter, CU-Boulder is still expecting to absorb additional reductions through fiscal year 2011.

A moment ago I spoke of how we are an entrepreneurial university. This moment in our history requires us to be entrepreneurial with a new approach to our budget for the future of our university. I am concerned about the state reduction in funding hanging over our heads for so long. I have been exploring with the leadership and governance groups on campus the idea of making decisions in the current fiscal year that will allow us to more quickly return to a strategy of targeted investments and advancing the university.

As a leadership team, we have engaged in an ongoing dialogue with faculty and staff with an eye toward finding ways of limiting the hurt that these additional reductions will do to the campus. To meet these financial targets, we are employing an approach that will emphasize three actions:

• Expense reductions
• Revenue enhancements
• And, further efficiencies

Let me spend a minute on the first prong of this three-prong approach: expense reductions.

Unfortunately, we have had a lot of experience at shrinking our budget to meet pressing realities over the last decade, and unfortunately, we've gotten pretty good at it. In the past, we have approached our budget reductions with across-the-board cuts and given the deans broad latitude to gingerly cut from the margins of their schools and colleges in order to preserve quality of education for our students.

But that approach has become increasingly difficult as we have had to cut to the point of risking mediocrity in too many areas of the campus. Quite simply, there is very little or no margin left.

After consultation with the provost, deans and vice chancellors, we have decided to take an alternative approach. Our aim will be to make deeper and more narrow cuts than we have taken to date. Up to now, we have been able to avoid this approach. Although this will dramatically impact some units, others will be minimally harmed and positioned to improve when new resources are identified for investment. This is a necessary new paradigm of budget reductions in these difficult and challenging times, and one that is intended to keep us a competitive institution. My belief is that we should not be positioning to just survive, but to improve and wherever possible, to flourish and become even stronger.

We know that there will be difficult decisions about what programs and services we must reduce or eliminate to allow us to preserve and strengthen the remaining core. And yet, I know we can do this, because the concept of choice is embedded in everything we do at this university—in research, in teaching and in service.

We have to focus on what we can continue to do well and be willing to stop doing some things for the sake of preserving precious resources that must be devoted to overall progress and continued success of the university.

As we engage in seeking expense reductions, revenue enhancements and new efficiencies, we will be working with the vice chancellors, deans and governance groups, who in turn will work with the department directors, chairs and faculty with one goal in mind: what is best for the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Once we have dealt with the reduction in state funds, we will be freed to move ahead with selected initiatives in our Flagship 2030 strategic plan that will meet the goals of the whole of the university that will strengthen the quality of education and scholarship at CU-Boulder. In this effort, we will have to put the needs of the university at the forefront of our decision-making.

In the past week, you may have read about testimony that President Benson gave to an interim committee of the legislature on fiscal integrity. President Benson stated that we have no interest in becoming a private university—the reason for that is simple: we were created by the state to serve the state, and regardless of our funding sources we will always be here to serve the citizens of Colorado. However, with the likely further reductions I mentioned, our state tax support will fall below 5% of our total budget.

If we are to maintain an ability to meet our state role and mission it will be critical to our fiscal health that we are allowed to operate with a maximum amount of flexibility and a minimum amount of state bureaucracy in order to be competitive and efficient. We will work with the legislature through the upcoming session to provide us with the flexibility we need. This work will be critical to our success in the other two areas of our budget management strategies on resource enhancement and additional efficiencies.

As in past budget reductions, this will result in some tough losses of some programs and yes, some personnel. But I believe out of this process will come new opportunities, new vision and new focus. I believe we will emerge from this challenge stronger than we have been. I have complete confidence in the deans, directors and vice chancellors to accomplish our budget goals as we move forward.

I also have complete faith and confidence in all of you that we will emerge stronger, more creative and more passionate than ever. We have persevered through some very difficult challenges in the past and we will persevere again.

Personally, I draw great inspiration from literature itself and from those who create it. So as I look at the difficulties we face, I am moved by the words of the great American author William Faulkner. At the dawn of the Cold War, as the nation struggled to find the confidence to face down international threats abroad, and what seemed a permanent uncertainty at home, Faulkner, accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949 and offered words of hope.

He said "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail."

My friends, we meet today on a smaller scale at another difficult moment, and I believe we will prevail. We will prevail because we cannot afford to halt the tremendous progress of this university as a new century takes hold. We are moving ahead with initiatives in our Flagship 2030 strategic plan that will meet the goals of the whole of the university, that will strengthen the quality of education at CU-Boulder.

That's what great universities do.