Published: Jan. 5, 2018

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had an opportunity to relax and recharge as we get ready for a new year and new semester. I’m looking forward to building on our momentum from last year, and continuing our Redefining Student Support initiative to ensure that students are at the center of all that we do.

As part of our ongoing commitment to holistic student support, I want part of our focus for this year to be on evaluating and discovering how we as a division can best support our students through data and assessment. Assessment provides a foundation for innovation; it allows us to pause and reflect on our current programs, services, and procedures and ask ourselves questions to determine if they are effective in supporting our students. Through our current processes, are we accomplishing our goals? Are we doing this because that’s how it’s always been done? Will they be effective in supporting students five or ten years from now? Are there new needs from students that we’re not addressing with our current practices? What opportunities are we missing out on? Through assessment, we can see what is working and what could be improved on, and make adjustments to ensure we’re fully supporting the needs of our students.

As we assess our current processes, services and programs to determine our effectiveness in supporting students, we also need to keep in mind the needs of both our current and future student populations. Gen Z students, and their families, will have a unique set of needs compared to past generations of students. We need to be ready to address those needs, and I encourage you to be open to change as we find innovative ways to support our students with our initiatives. We have an opportunity to make a difference in the experience of each student at CU Boulder.

I’m truly looking forward to increasing our capacity to work together as one university across the division and campus, and find creative solutions to address the needs of our students and families.

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Christina Gonzales