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The Buff Undergraduate Success (BUS) team, formed in fall 2021, was charged with improving undergraduate student success by collaborating with faculty, staff and units from across CU Boulder to identify and implement programs, policies and processes that will increase student retention, help students earn their degrees in a timely fashion and create a campus community where undergraduate students feel like they belong. 

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BUS team seeks your ideas and feedback

The BUS team encourages campus engagement and welcomes your ideas for improving undergraduate student success. Visit the Buff Undergraduate Success page for more information and to share your ideas.

By the beginning of the fall 2022 semester, individual working groups, in collaboration with the leadership implementation team, completed initiatives ranging from a revision of the campus’s grade replacement policy to creating the new Basic Needs Center within the Division of Student Affairs to unify currently scattered efforts and resources.

The BUS team’s major initiatives completed in fall 2022 or on track for the start of the spring 2023 semester include:

• Launching a new student communication model that consolidates student support and resource information and lets students set their preferences for non-mandatory campus communication
• Revising the campus eCommunications policy to streamline and simplify the volume and formatting of messages going to undergraduates
• Creating a prototype first-year student success dashboard to track vital areas of academic and social progress
• Drafting a proposal for an enhanced campuswide academic advising infrastructure
• Assessing needs, challenges and opportunities with CU Boulder’s many tutoring resources
• Identifying affinity spaces on campus
• Piloting speedier transfer credit evaluation processes within selected College of Arts and Sciences departments
• Facilitating the replacement of the former Minimum Academic Preparation Standards (MAPS) admission requirements, which were discontinued by the University of Colorado system, with campus-wide as well as college/school-specific admission recommendations

For 2023, the BUS team will focus on the following initiatives:

• Improve the allocation of scholarships and create consistent scholarship renewal criteria 
• Refocus CU Lead Alliance programs to provide consistent service to targeted populations
• Expand the transfer credit evaluation efficiency prototype in the College of Arts and Sciences
• Establish a plan to create a common framework for undergraduate advising across campus
• Begin to implement a new degree audit platform: review degree audit rules, encoding and exception practices
• Align and support key campus traditions for all students and for affinity-based communities
• Provide training for using the new first-year student success dashboard
• Pending faculty governance approval, begin to implement the common curriculum
• Create a proposal for improving tutoring across campus
• Create a campus network for call center staff
• Establish a plan to reduce tuition and fees for lower-income students
• Create a faculty framework for Canvas grading enhancements and best practices