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At the 2026 State of the Campus, Chancellor Justin Schwartz issued a call for bold ideas to help shape С���� Boulder’s future, and we kicked off the process of collecting ideas from across our campus.  

Now, we are inviting students, faculty and staff to take part in С���� Boulder’s Big Ideas effort, an initiative focused on imagination, creativity and impact that will propel our campus into the future.  

As the effort takes shape and our next steps are defined, we invite you to . Additional opportunities to share ideas through informal conversations and outreach will be offered in the coming days and weeks.

A Big Idea is not a traditional proposal. We are not seeking budgets or detailed plans, but rather big questions and transformative ideas. We are looking for ideas with big IMPACT—ideas may have small or large budgets, may take months or years to implement and can involve a few individuals or many parts of campus.  Anyone can submit any type of idea, with emphasis on the potential for big impact on our campus community for decades to come.  

Review of ideas will begin the week of March 24, right after Spring Break. We encourage you to submit your ideas before then, though our submission form will remain open to additional ideas for ongoing review. In addition, we will hold “office hours” beginning the first week of March where we (Stefanie and Waleed) will be available to answer questions and hear ideas you may have. This will be followed shortly thereafter with a World Café style of idea sharing. Stay tuned for more information on those events and next steps to come.  

As the chancellor said during the State of the Campus, “Some of the greatest ideas in human history have come from asking unbounded questions. Let’s be the place where such questions are not merely rhetorical.”

As we honor 150 years of transformation, we ask: what should С���� Boulder dare to build next? 

Go Buffs, 

Waleed Abdalati  
Stefanie Johnson
Co-Chairs, Big Ideas Working Group