Programs for People Video Transcript

Chancellor Robert Coombe: We need to be this remarkable place that draws exceptional talent among our students and our faculty to the institution and makes that talent available to enrich public life. That’s one of the most important ways we can serve the public good here at the University of Denver. What is it that universities are actually doing with their scholarship and research enterprises that have a direct impact on an audience outside of academia? At the University of Denver, we can answer that very clearly. The culture here is one that is really quite clearly focused on those beneficiaries.

If you think about a raft of things we do, from the sciences, where we have work in improving the environment, to work in biomechanics for patients in hospitals, to public art out of our art school, to the Butler Institute in the Graduate School of Social Work, to Howard Markman’s work on marriage and families, to the work in the Daniels College about sustainability, or the law school, about ethics. All of these kinds of things enrich people’s lives and have a very direct impact on enormous numbers of people outside of academia. That’s an important part of the character of this university.

There is this old adage that one hears now and again, that you go to a great university, one of the great research universities, to be among the best minds in the world, but that you go to one of the elite liberal arts colleges for the best teaching and learning experiences that can be offered in this country. I’ve always thought that, here at DU, we shouldn’t ask our students to make that choice. That we should offer them the very best of both worlds, and we are positioned, we are structured, in a way that makes that possible.

One of the unique things about DU is that undergraduates now have direct access to those nationally and internationally competitive scholars. They are the people that are teaching those first-year classes. Those scholars are the people that are teaching undergraduates throughout their sophomore, junior and senior years in these classes that have five, ten, 12 students in them. There is this extraordinary, unlimited access to these top-of-the-line minds for undergraduates here. And that’s what we mean by a research university that offers an extraordinary undergraduate experience.