Dinner With the Chancellor
At DU, you get to meet the people in charge.
Each year, DU Chancellor Robert Coombe hosts dinners with first-year students. The dinner program, now in its fourth year, gives students the chance to meet the chancellor and learn about the University.
At DU, every student is given the opportunity to meet our chancellor, Robert Coombe.
Students also meet the alumni, faculty and staff who attend.
The chancellor begins the evening by recounting DU’s history, explaining that the University is as old as the city of Denver. Coombe tells students that the University’s founder, John Evans, came to Denver in the 1860s with a dream of bringing civilization to the city which was then "a vast, empty space."
Coombe tells the first-year students that Evans isn’t the only keeper of DU’s history.
"It’s your history now," he says to the group.
After dinner, Julanna Gilbert—a chemistry professor, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and the chancellor’s wife—gives students a tour of the Williams Carillon.
For students, the evening is an opportunity to learn about the University and meet important DU leaders—all while enjoying good food. The event drew 715 students in 2007—more than 60 percent of the first-year class.
"There is a lot of history to this place that I didn’t know about," says Sean Chapin, a real estate and construction management major from Minneapolis, who attended a chancellor’s dinner in October 2007.
Students agree the experience is a rare one.
"It’s nice to have personal interaction with the chancellor and other faculty," says Denver native Crystal Simon, an international studies major. "It’s not something we can have at other universities."
Published on Dec. 20, 2007