On Sept. 23, Chancellor Rebecca Chopp and Provost and Vice Chancellor Greg Kvistad hosted a town hall meeting in the Anderson Academic Commons in order to receive feedback on the recently released DU Impact 2025 plan.
The full document of the plan was released online on Sept. 21 as the “respond and refine” aspect of Imagine DU. The whole Imagine DU initiative started in the winter of 2015.
DU Impact 2025 lays out the impact model through four “transformative directions.” Transformative Direction One is “Students Striving For Success,” Transformative Direction Two is “Knowledge Design in a Collaboration Age,” Transformative Direction Three is “Impact Denver and the Rocky Mountain West” and Transformative Direction Four is “One DU.” The Directions focus on building community both at DU and in the surrounding area by creating more opportunities for students, staff, faculty and alumni.
Image courtesy of imagine.du.edu
“We’ve got to come together,” Kvistad said. “Students have been trying to do this for years through athletics and other things and there are a variety of means of doing this … it’s from tradition, it’s about doing things as a community that involve all of us … coming together.”
In accordance with other DU initiatives, the Chancellor and Provost and the Impact 2025 document also highlighted sustainability and a community of diversity and inclusive excellence. Constantly trying to strive towards better programming for students and the outside community in order to better support students and alumni was discussed as well.
“We have to support the students outside the classroom so they can have the very best experience inside the classroom,” Chopp said.
The town hall was sparsely attended, by students, even though student success—by both graduate and undergraduates—is a large aspect of the plan. However, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty and staff were all represented at the town hall. Most of the attendants expressed appreciation for the plan.
Feedback for the plan can be given online through the Imagine DU website and another town hall will be held from 3-4:30 p.m. on Oct. 19, also in the AAC.
