Message from the Dean

As interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, I am pleased to introduce the inaugural edition of Pinnacle. This publication grew from a strong desire to reconnect with our alumni. We hope this annual periodical will keep you informed and excited about what’s going on in CLAS.

I’m pleased to report that undergraduate enrollment has grown dramatically over the past three years. This growth has created issues with space, staff support and faculty numbers. We are meeting these challenges by hiring nearly 30 new tenure-track faculty, the largest increase in our history. We are also excited about the construction of a Science Building that will provide critical new teaching space, as well as teaching and research labs for UC Denver and our Auraria partner institutions.

The CLAS student body is also becoming more diverse. In the past three years, CLAS has seen a 23 percent rise in the enrollment of minority students, who now account for just under a third of the student body. In addition, international students comprise about 3 percent of our student body. We expect this number to rise after the launch of bachelor’s programs in economics and communication at the International College in Beijing in fall 2008.
Last year we embarked on a college-wide effort to identify and develop distinctive areas of intellectual interest and strength among our faculty, staff and students. The year-long process resulted in seven signature areas for CLAS:

• Sustainability (developing undergraduate curriculum)
• Public Humanities (using public lectures to convey the value of our scholarly traditions)
• Environome Science (studying the interaction of our genes with the environment)
• Social Justice (insuring equality in resource distributions)
• Innovative Learning Research (capturing the latest research in developing more efficient teaching strategies)
• Gender and Sexuality Studies (understanding who we are and how we define each other)
• Geospatial Technologies (pursuing the new geographical display technologies to more vividly describe natural and man-made occurrences on our neighborhoods and planet)

As articles in this issue report, faculty and staff are already making progress in some of these initiatives. Furthermore, these signature areas will allow us to work closely with our colleagues at the Anschutz Medical Campus.

From a Colorado Book Award to electron micrographic images displayed in a traveling art exhibit and mathematical modeling and prediction of wildfires, CLAS faculty and students are adding to the understanding of our world—locally and globally. And, while our achievements deserve recognition, we know that our most important accomplishments are played out daily in the intellectual lives and creative activities of our graduates.

As we reach out to you, our alumni with the premier edition of Pinnacle, we urge you to reach back. Let us be part of your lives.

Best wishes,
James H. Hageman
Interim Dean, CLAS