University of Colorado at Boulder - Academics

Academics

The University of Colorado Boulder is divided into several colleges and schools. While the College of Arts and Sciences is by far the largest, the university also consists of the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the schools of Architecture and Planning, Education, Journalism and Mass Communication, Music, Law, and the Leeds School of Business. Most, if not all, of these colleges and schools also incorporate masters and doctorate level degree programs. At the University, there are currently approximately 3,400 courses available in over 150 disciplines comprising 85 majors ranging from Accounting to Women's Studies.

University of Colorado School of Law is the smallest and most selective of the colleges. The Wolf Law Building, the new home of the Law School, was dedicated on September 8, 2006, by United States Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer.

The Leeds School of Business has an enrollment of 3,300 students including undergraduates, master's candidates, and Ph.D. candidates. The undergraduate program ranks 39th in the country and the undergraduate entrepreneurship program ranks 14th in the nation. The MBA program ranks 26th among all public universities. The faculty are ranked 38th in the nation according to the Academy of Management Journal.

CU-Boulder adopted an honor code in 2000 following growing concerns about academic dishonesty on campus in the late 1990s. A copy of the code stating "On my honor, as a University of Colorado at Boulder student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized assistance on this work" is engraved on a metal plate and posted in every classroom on campus.

Undergraduates who seek an academic challenge may participate in CU's Honors Program. Begun in 1931, the Honors Program currently consists of the top ten percent of incoming freshmen and participating undergraduates with a 3.3 GPA or greater (on a 4.0 scale). The program offers over 40 honors classes each semester taught by tenured or tenure-track professors and limited to class sizes of 15 students. Honors students also have the opportunity to graduate with honors, high honors, and highest honors, by writing and defending a thesis during their senior year. The program extends into the residence halls through the Kittredge Honors Program. The Presidents Leadership Class is a program for top scholars at the University of Colorado Boulder. Scholars participate in a four-year leadership development program. The program provides opportunities to the top fifty students at CU from every major and discipline.

One option for students (mostly freshman and sophomores) living on campus is to join a residential academic program (RAP). Each RAP focuses on a curricular theme, and offer courses in the residence hall itself. The programs also include educational activities.

Aerospace engineering was ranked 16th, the entrepreneurship program in the Leeds School of Business was tied for 18th, and the environmental engineering program was ranked 18th among public undergraduate specialty programs in U.S. News & World Report’s 2010 America’s Best Colleges issue. Sixteen CU-Boulder graduate school specialty programs were ranked in the top 50 in the nation, including four in the top 10, in U.S. News & World Report’s 2010 America’s Best Graduate Schools issue. The graduate specialty programs in the top 10 were atomic/molecular/optical physics (1), quantum physics (4), environmental law (6), and physical chemistry (10). The graduate specialty programs in the top 25 were business entrepreneurship (17), aerospace engineering (12), ceramics (14), geology (18), chemical engineering (19), environmental engineering (21), elementary education (22), and civil engineering (25). The graduate specialty programs in the top 50 were mechanical engineering (32), computer engineering (33), and electrical engineering (36). Fourteen CU-Boulder schools, colleges, and areas of study were ranked in the top 50 and three others were in the top 60 nationally in U.S. News & World Report’s 2010 Best Graduate Schools issue. They were physics (20), speech-language pathology (25), earth sciences (25), chemistry (28), psychology (29), biological sciences (33), education (38), computer science (39), political science (39), engineering (40), law (45), English (46), math (48), economics (50), history (52), sociology (57), and the fine arts master’s degree (58). CU-Boulder ranks in the top five universities in the nation, excluding military academies, for astronaut alumni who have flown in space, with 17. CU-Boulder was ranked the “greenest” school in the nation by Sierra magazine in 2009, a move up from second place in 2008. CU-Boulder’s leadership in sustainability spans nearly six decades, with rigorous academic offerings in the Environmental Studies Program as well as the integration of environmental studies into other fields including architecture and planning, business, law, journalism and others. CU-Boulder offers 14 degree programs, nine majors, and four certificate programs in or related to environmental studies. Nine CU-Boulder doctoral programs were ranked in the top 10 in the nation in a faculty productivity index featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education in January 2007. The ranking, which was produced by Academic Analytics, rated the scholarly output of faculty members at more than 7,000 doctoral programs across the country. The CU-Boulder programs were geography (2), physical oceanography (4), communication (6), cognitive science (7), atmospheric sciences (8), chemical engineering (8), biomedical engineering (9), civil and environmental engineering (9), and aerospace engineering science (4). The Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at CU Boulder’s Leeds School of Business was ranked in the top 20 business school programs by U.S. News & World Report. The Deming Center moved up three spots from last year to 17th place for its graduate school entrepreneurship program for the 2009–10 academic year. It has been ranked among the top 20 programs nationally for the last decade.