CU president visits Montrose

MONTROSE  — University of Colorado President Bruce Benson is traveling throughout the state to discuss higher education and the university. His stop in Montrose was brief, speaking at a Rotarian luncheon and with the Daily Press.

Among his topics were funding, ongoing projects and cutting-edge research.

Benson came into office in March as the 22nd president of the university, which consists of CU-Boulder, UC Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora and UC Colorado Springs.

“CU is really on the right track again. We kind of slipped there for a while,” Benson said at the luncheon.

As president, Benson said he believes in accountability and transparency; he’s known as a troubleshooter.

Benson is a 1964 CU-Boulder geology graduate who founded Benson Mineral Group, an oil and gas exploration and production company. His corporate work brought some concerns when he was named president. However, Benson had considerable experience in education, including serving as national chairman of CU’s four-campus, $1 billion Comprehensive Fund-Raising Campaign and chairing Metropolitan State College of Denver’s board of trustees. He also chaired the Colorado Commission on Higher Education and was on the Higher Education Task Force of the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry’s Blueprint for Colorado. In addition, Benson was chosen for the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Panel for Higher Education for the 21st Century and co-chaired Gov. Bill Ritter’s P-20 Education Coordinating Council.

“I’ve just done a ton of things,” Benson told the Daily Press. “I have a lot of experience around higher education. ... When you think about it, what a university needs now, they need people who have an understanding of business. They have to understand the enterprise, because it’s a different enterprise. ... You have to have business instincts.”

Benson said those instincts have helped him “beef up” the university’s operations in Washington. He believes they will also help him finish the many projects currently taking place on the university’s campuses.

They include biotechnology initiatives such as regenerating cartilage. “We are really way out on the cutting edge,”  Benson said.

The university’s involvement with the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory is also a big step in advancing research, he said.

CU’s other advances include the Health Sciences Center’s move to the former Fitzsimons Army Medical Center campus. Benson is working to move the Veterans Administration Hospital to that location.

Benson also noted that Tom Cech, the university’s first Nobel Prize (chemistry) winner, returned to the Boulder campus, and the Colorado Springs campus has started working with the U.S. Olympics headquarters in that city.

He discussed the challenges higher education faces.

“Coloradans do not value higher education like they should,” he said at the luncheon. Colorado ranks high for bachelors degrees per capita, Benson said. However, the state ranks at the bottom for graduating students from high school.

“It’s very important that we get the word out to everyone how important higher education is,” he said. “These are the things we need to be working on.”

Contact Kati O’Hare via e-mail at katio@montrosepress.com