In recognition of their long-standing relationship with the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Craig Slater and his wife, Colleen, have donated $1.5 million that establishes the Slater Family Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology.

This new $2 million endowment (established with the Slater gift and other commitments, and which will support a senior-faculty position) represents the second gift of $1.5 million or greater toward ophthalmology at CU within the last three months. These gifts come as the affiliated CU Eye Center prepares to break ground in June on a larger home at the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Institute at University of Colorado Hospital.

The holder of the Slater Family Endowed Chair in Ophthalmology will be Professor of Ophthalmology Malik Y. Kahook, MD, who is director of clinical and translational research and chief of the glaucoma service at the CU Eye Center. An endowed chair gift provides a reliable and perpetual stream of support for the chairholder. It is also a public indicator of a program’s prestige and helps universities recruit and retain top talent.

Dr. Kahook’s research focuses on multiple unmet needs within the ophthalmology field, including novel glaucoma therapies, advanced cataract surgery devices and implants, drug delivery targeting macular degeneration, and advanced imaging techniques.

“The generous gift from the Slater family is a formative event in our efforts to innovate both in clinical care and scientific discovery within the department of ophthalmology,” Dr. Kahook said. “I look forward to the hard work we have ahead of us and to developing new treatments for blinding diseases.”

A 1979 undergraduate alumnus of the University of Colorado Boulder and 1996 graduate alumnus of the University of Colorado Denver Business School, donor Craig Slater has served in multiple leadership roles over more than 25 years with the Anschutz Corporation. He now serves as chairman of Anschutz Investment Company.

The Slater family is making this gift because of their long-standing relationship with the Department of Ophthalmology and their belief that future therapies and cures for blinding diseases can be achieved by Dr. Kahook and his colleagues.

The CU Eye Center at the Anschutz Medical Campus—the only academic eye center within a 500-mile radius—has set an ambitious goal of establishing new, interconnected research programs in six high-priority areas and doubling its annual patient capacity from 75,000 to 150,000. The latter would be enabled in part by an anticipated tripling of space at its home at the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Institute building in University of Colorado Hospital.

This “Bringing Sight to Life” CU initiative will depend heavily on private support, and the program hopes that the Slater family’s gift will generate attention and momentum for this fundraising effort, and for the caliber of eye care and research at CU. With more than 50 faculty members in the Department of Ophthalmology, CU’s program is growing rapidly to rival the size of the largest departments in the country. CU was the first U.S. academic center to commercially use femtosecond laser cataract surgery, and the first to discover use of silicone oil to mitigate radiation damage to the eye, among other pioneering achievements.

In March, Sue Anschutz-Rodgers donated $2 million that established an endowed chair in retinal diseases, now held by Naresh Mandava, MD, chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the CU School of Medicine.

These gifts are among more than 300,000 gifts made during Creating Futures, a $1.5 billion fundraising campaign to enhance University of Colorado education, research, outreach, and health programs benefiting citizens throughout and beyond Colorado. Visit cufund.org for more information.

The Franklins’ goals will outlive them at the University of Colorado Denver, where they are making gifts that will establish three endowed scholarships and programs for at-risk youth that extend the Shaka Franklin Foundation’s mission of mentorship, character-building and suicide prevention.

The Franklins intend their CU Denver commitment to ultimately total $1.5 million (pending the sale of two properties whose proceeds will fund this gift). Wednesday Les and Marianne (a University of Colorado Foundation trustee) made a first payment toward this gift.

“We’ve seen so many young people who didn’t think they would go to college. Nobody ever encouraged them to do anything,” Les Franklin says. “Our life’s work is about saving our children, loving our children. What the University of Colorado brings to this state and to the community is so important. We didn’t go to CU, but this is our community, our city. And we want people to know that our work continues.”

Underscoring the Franklins’ focus on local, at-risk youth, the three Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth scholarships will be designated for Denver-area students who might fall through the cracks of traditional scholarship awards—students with B-/C+ grade point averages who could not otherwise afford tuition, and who are willing to mentor adolescents in similar circumstances. This sort of scholarship might once have gone to Les Franklin, who as a schoolboy had a D average but went on to become an executive at IBM.

Each scholarship (for students in one of two schools, the Business School or the School of Education & Human Development) will be named in honor of three regional trailblazers whose civil-rights efforts have been meaningful to the Franklins: Rachel Noel, Evie Dennis and James Ward. A goal is for the Franklin Scholarships to cover, in conjunction with other need-based grants, 100 percent of a student’s tuition need.

“The work of Les and Marianne Franklin has given hope to thousands of children throughout Colorado, and has saved many lives,” says Donald Elliman, CU Denver chancellor. “We’re honored that they have chosen CU Denver as the place to further their goals, and we are grateful that these scholarships and programs will open doors for promising youth going forward.”

When the program is fully developed, the Franklins’ support will provide the seed for opportunity breakfasts, guest speakers, pre-collegiate workshops, service awards and business partnerships, all consistent with the Shaka Franklin Foundation for Youth’s long-time mission.

The Franklins started the Foundation in 1990 to address the problem of youth suicide, and were motivated to do so after the teen suicide of Les’s first son, Shaka. Colorado’s suicide rate is sixth among U.S. states.

A popular community resource for youth in east Denver, the Shaka Franklin Foundation has provided positive alternatives and activities for adolescents (ice hockey is a particular passion for Les), and has endured even through the subsequent suicide of another son, Jamon. Though in recent years the Shaka Franklin Foundation has maintained a lower profile, the gift will give the Franklins’ youth-empowerment efforts a boost.

“I was a business major, and we’ve managed our foundation like we managed a business,” Les says. “It is a business—the business of saving lives.”

The Franklins’ gift is one of more than 275,000 gifts made during Creating Futures, a $1.5 billion fundraising campaign to enhance University of Colorado education, research, outreach and health programs benefiting citizens throughout and beyond Colorado. Visit cufund.org for more information.

The University of Colorado Denver offers more than 130 degrees and programs in 13 schools and colleges and serves more than 14,000 students.  The university is located on two campuses. CU Denver is in downtown Denver and the CU Anschutz Medical Campus is in Aurora, Colo. For more information, visit the university’s newsroom.

With this gift, the newly renamed Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship will expand its annual Business Plan competition\ to encompass universities throughout Colorado and the West. It will enable the build-out of a named marquee space for the new Business School building. It will fund new endowments for a professorship, faculty research, programming and operations.

In sum, Jabs’ gift will strengthen all aspects of the entrepreneurship center, foster connections between entrepreneurs and students region-wide, and bolster the center’s stature as it progresses toward becoming one of the top academic entrepreneurship centers in the nation.

Jabs’s gift is nearly double the total of the largest prior cash commitment to CU Denver, and leads a wave of more than $20 million in private support toward the CU Denver Business School within two years.

“Jake Jabs is a highly accomplished and well-regarded businessman who has done a considerable amount for Colorado and the Denver community,” CU President Bruce Benson said. “His contribution to the Business School will help CU Denver nurture the next generation of business leaders and deepen our connections with the Denver business community.”

Jabs has supported an entrepreneurship center at Montana State University in addition to numerous charities. He chose to make this transformative gift to CU Denver’s Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship, where he has guest-lectured on occasion, as part of his broader personal goals of celebrating entrepreneurial values, and of raising the bar to keep American university graduates competitive in a global marketplace.

“What motivated me to get more involved with CU, frankly, is Madhavan Parthasarathy, said Jabs, referring to the center’s director, a CU Denver associate professor of marketing. “We think a lot alike. We both come from humble beginnings. We believe in living below our means. We have quite a bit in common, in terms of our philosophy of life.”

Parthasarathy, who has known Jabs for seven years, thinks the gift’s most immediate and visible impact will be on the annual Business Plan Competition; the 2013 competition will culminate June 18. “The goal is to get as many students involved as possible, whether within the Business School, or in engineering, music, or other fields,” Parthasarathy said. “Next year, the business plan competition will be open to a much broader range of schools, which will give our center a real regional impact.

Until the last 30 years, few American universities had formal entrepreneurship programs. Since the 1980s, there has been increased prevalence and interest in entrepreneurship education, responding to the notion that in a highly competitive landscape, the launch of new businesses (and innovation of existing ones) requires more than just vision. Entrepreneurship also requires fluency with business planning, financing, regulation, and other systemic factors that are taught and nurtured in an academic setting, in conjunction with exposure to start-up companies, family businesses, and small business operations.

CU Denver launched its entrepreneurship center in 1996 with an initial gift by Richard H. and Pamela S. Bard. In the 17 years since, more than 2,500 CU Denver students have participated in programs including more than a dozen courses, the business plan competition, speaker series, and a business incubator among other activities. Several growing Colorado businesses got their start thanks to this center, including Elevated Third, Viktorian Guitars, and Nokero.

“Jake Jabs’ story and vision will inspire many future entrepreneurs at the Center,” Richard Bard said. “Pam and I feel honored to have launched this entrepreneurship program for CU Denver, and we know it has had a positive impact for both the students and the state in transforming ideas into economic results.”

Jake Jabs is an appropriate namesake for an entrepreneurship center in the heart of the Rocky Mountain region. Jabs was born one of nine children in an immigrant family in a small, hardscrabble Montana ranch town, and through military service and early business experiences operating a music store, he developed an ethic of hard work and a respect for the start-up spirit.

From the vestiges of a defunct furniture business, Jabs started American Furniture Warehouse in 1975. Throughout 38 years of sustained business growth, Jabs has become a recognized icon throughout Colorado, sometimes appearing in advertisements with a live tiger on his lap. Today, American Furniture Warehouse has 12 Colorado stores, $350 million in annual sales, and plans for out-of-state expansion.

The Business School at the University of Colorado Denver is the largest graduate school of business in the Rocky Mountain region. The Business School educates more than 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students who come from around the world to study in one of its 12 degree tracks and industry-focused programs such as Entrepreneurship, Commodities, Health Administration, Risk Management and Insurance, and Global Energy Management. The newly remodeled building supports the school’s collaborative culture, embodies its commitment to environmental sustainability, and facilitates partnerships with industry and the community.

Jabs’s gift is one of more than 275,000 gifts made during Creating Futures, a $1.5 billion fundraising campaign to enhance University of Colorado education, research, outreach, and health programs benefiting citizens throughout and beyond Colorado. Visit cufund.org for more information.

The initial holder of the Sue Anschutz-Rodgers Endowed Chair in Retinal Diseases will be Naresh Mandava, MD. Dr. Mandava is Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and Executive Director of the CU Eye Center, located at University of Colorado Hospital. An endowed chair gift provides a reliable and perpetual stream of faculty research funding, is a public indicator of a program’s prestige, and helps universities recruit and retain top talent.

“Sue Anschutz-Rodgers’s generosity in establishing the first endowed chair in the Department of Ophthalmology is commendable, and I am extremely grateful,” Mandava says. “We have the right people in place as well as the infrastructure to find solutions for macular degeneration, and develop one of the top retinal research programs in the world.”

Mandava has spent the last 16 years researching age-related macular degeneration (a leading cause of vision loss in people over age 60, for which there are therapies but currently no cure) and other retinal diseases. His research focus is toward finding solutions through new technologies in imaging, drug therapy, and artificial vision. Under Mandava’s leadership, the University of Colorado has pioneered the concept of stimulating the retina with photovoltaic nanoparticles, which have the potential to restore sight in blind people.  

“My gift honors the outstanding clinical care and research that has flourished at the University of Colorado School of Medicine under Dr. Mandava’s leadership,” says Sue Anschutz-Rodgers, a philanthropist, rancher, and conservationist. “My hope is that the gift will inspire others to support the eye care and groundbreaking research that will be critical to the Rocky Mountain region, and to those suffering from diseases of the eye everywhere.”

The gift comes at a time of outstanding momentum for the University of Colorado Eye Center, a research and clinical center based at the Anschutz Medical Campus, and the only academic eye center within a 500-mile radius.

The CU Eye Center has set a goal of establishing new, interconnected research programs in six high-priority areas and doubling its annual patient capacity from 75,000 to 150,000. The latter would be enabled in part by an anticipated tripling of space at its home at the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Institute building in University of Colorado Hospital.

This “Bringing Sight to Life” CU initiative will depend heavily on private support, and the program hopes that Sue Anschutz-Rodgers’s gift will generate attention and momentum for this fundraising effort, and for the caliber of eye care and research at CU. With more than 50 faculty members in the Department of Ophthalmology, CU’s program is growing rapidly to rival the size of the largest departments in the country. CU has been the first U.S. academic center to perform femtosecond laser cataract surgery, and the first to discover use of silicone oil to mitigate radiation damage to the eye, among other pioneering achievements.

Anschutz family members have been integral to the rapid development of CU’s 227-acre health sciences campus in Aurora.

Sue Anschutz-Rodgers’s gift is one of more than 275,000 gifts made during Creating Futures, a $1.5 billion fundraising campaign to enhance University of Colorado education, research, outreach, and health programs benefiting citizens throughout and beyond Colorado. Visit cufund.org for more information.

This prestigious faculty post was made possible by Thomas Stix Guggenheim and his wife Pedie, of Cincinnati and Snowmass Village, Colo., and his four children, each of whom also attended CU-Boulder.

The new chair will enhance business education at the Leeds School by offering a broader exploration of the factors that allow some firms to succeed and others to fail.

The chair also advances key Leeds priorities, as it will help aspiring innovators develop the critical thinking skills that result in creative solutions to diverse and complex challenges. “Our business experience has demonstrated there is as much, if not more, to learn from business failures as from successes,” Guggenheim said. “One main aspect of our endowed chair is to case-study this belief.”

David Ikenberry, dean of the Leeds School, said the creation of the Thomas Stix Guggenheim Family Endowed Chair in Business Design and Innovation is emblematic of the school’s mission. “We have embarked on an innovation agenda that will enable graduates to evolve in a rapidly changing business climate and ensure their ability to drive value,” he said. “We are fortunate and grateful for the family’s generous support as we pursue this great challenge.” 

The concept of business design is an emerging area of business education — exploring the interaction of factors such as strategy, product or service design, and entrepreneurial leadership to solve complex problems and drive economic innovation and successful business creation. 

With Leeds and CU’s long-standing reputation for entrepreneurship education along with Boulder’s identity as one of the nation’s most entrepreneurial and creative cities, this new chair is a logical fit for Colorado and its economy.

The Thomas Stix Guggenheim Family Endowed Chair in Business Design and Innovation is a tribute to the successful career and outstanding leadership of the chair’s namesake. After graduating from CU-Boulder in 1950 with a degree in marketing, Guggenheim went on to lead two successful hosiery (sock) businesses.

“It’s exciting to see CU-Boulder graduates giving back to the university in such an important way so future generations of students can succeed in their entrepreneurial endeavors,” said Chancellor Philip DiStefano.
 
A longtime donor to CU-Boulder, Guggenheim has supported the Center for Education on Social Responsibility, which integrates ethics education across the Leeds School curriculum to develop values-driven leaders, and a popular freshman-level course titled “Profiles in American Enterprise,” which invited top executives to discuss relevant business issues.

An endowed chair gift provides a reliable and perpetual stream of funding for a senior faculty position. It is a public indicator of a program’s prestige and it helps universities recruit and retain top talent.

A global search will launch immediately to identify a candidate to serve as the first Guggenheim Family Endowed Chair. The goal is to fill the tenured post, to be housed within the school’s Division of Management, for the start of the fall semester in 2014.

The gift is one of more than 275,000 gifts made to date during Creating Futures, a $1.5 billion fundraising campaign to enhance CU education, research, outreach and health programs benefiting citizens throughout Colorado and beyond. Visit http://www.cufund.org for more information.

Charles Gillette (Charlie) McCord, of Boulder, Colorado died March 16, 2013 at TRU Hospice Care Center surrounded by his family.  He was 78.

Charlie was born on September 13, 1934 to Charles Gillette McCord, Sr. and Dorothy Dalton McCord in Queens, New York.  On June 20, 1959 Charlie married Gretchen Sue Abbot in Garden City, New York.  He is survived by his wife Sue, his daughter Jennifer, his son Kyle and two granddaughters, Cassie and Riley.

Charlie received a BA from Springfield College, a Master’s Degree from Colgate University and an advanced degree from Harvard Business School. Charlie began his career as the Freshman Basketball Coach for Cornell University and later served in various administrative roles.  He then became Vice President of Ithaca College.  In 1981, Charlie moved to Boulder, CO to serve as President of the University of Colorado Foundation, the fund-raising arm for the University of Colorado at Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs and CU Anschutz Medical Campus .  He retired from this position in 2000.

During his illustrious career, Charlie received a number of awards and recognitions. He was honored with the Alumni C Club Award from the University of Colorado in 2002. He also received the University of Colorado Medal in 2004; and the Ira C. Rothgerber Award, for “extraordinary contribution” to CU in 2013. Charlie was a member of Phi Delta Kappa, a Professional Education Fraternity.

Charlie enjoyed many outdoor activities including tennis, golf, basketball, and pickle ball.  Quality time with his family and close friends was important to him; and a highlight of his life. He also enjoyed travel, reading and summers at the family cottage in Silver Bay, New York.

A cremation has been entrusted to the Howe Mortuary. A celebration of Charlie’s life will be held at 3:00 p.m., Saturday, April 13, 2013 at Old Main on the University of Colorado, Boulder campus.

Memorial contributions may be made to TRU Hospice Care, 2594 Trailridge Drive East, Lafayette, Colorado 80026. Please share your thoughts, memories and condolences with the family at www.howemortuary.com.

To honor and recognize this transformational gift, the program will be renamed the Thompson Jazz Studies Program, as announced at yesterday’s annual Spring Swing big band concert. It is CU-Boulder’s first named program.

Program Chair John Davis expects the endowment to strengthen the Thompson Jazz Studies Program’s ability to support guest artist residencies, professional recordings of CU jazz ensembles and travel for national competitions — all of which will expand the program’s caliber and reputation. Since being established at CU-Boulder in 1996 with graduate offerings, the Thompson Jazz Studies Program has become a vibrant, versatile and highly regarded program with an undergraduate major, a doctoral degree and more than a dozen awards for student recordings from leading jazz publication Downbeat.

All this for a program that did not exist when Daniel Sher became College of Music dean in 1993. During his 20-year tenure, the college has established the nation’s first Entrepreneurship Center for Music, has enhanced its endowment and degree offerings, and has been cited among the top 25 U.S. music programs. The Thompson Jazz Studies Program endowment is another achievement as he retires this June, and it positions the college well for a new dean; finalists for the position were announced on Feb. 20.

“The Thompsons have always been great supporters of the College of Music,” says Davis, who also is the college’s associate dean of administration. “They’ve created a lot of opportunities for our students, and with their support our program has gone from one of moderate visibility to one that has become a national player.”

“Jazz is a truly unique American art form, and there aren’t very many of those,” says Jack Thompson, who with Jeannie has also led an effort to attract matching gifts for the endowment. “We couldn’t conceive of a place where Glenn Miller came from not having a vibrant and vigorous jazz program.” CU’s jazz lineage includes Glenn Miller, who attended CU-Boulder before becoming a big band pioneer known for such classics as “In the Mood.”

The endowment will generate annual distributions of unrestricted funds (roughly $80,000 a year, when fully in place), which Jazz Studies leadership can use at their discretion.

Jeannie (Zool’64) and Jack (Hist’64, MA’70) are the CU-Boulder chairs for CU’s $1.5 billion Creating Futures campaign, and have donated to more than a dozen CU programs, indicating a powerful mixture of broad interests and institutional loyalties. They first met at the Sink as students in the early 1960s.

In 2005, they endowed the Thompson Awards for Western American Writing at the Center of the American West. In 2008, they gave $2 million toward the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Biotechnology Building, where a vaccine development research neighborhood is named in their honor.

“As Creating Futures campaign chairs for the Boulder campus, our hope is to show that donors have multiple interests. When you look at the breadth of the University of Colorado, there are so many programs worthy of support,” Jeannie Thompson says. “We hope this gift will spur the campaign forward and help donors see the many ways they can make a difference.”

Founded in 1967, the nonprofit CU Foundation partners with the University of Colorado to raise, manage and invest private support for the university’s benefit. More than 200,000 donors to date have contributed to Creating Futures, a $1.5 billion fundraising campaign to enhance University of Colorado education, research, outreach, and health programs benefiting citizens throughout and beyond Colorado. Visit http://www.cufund.org for more information.

With this chair—the first of its kind at the University of Colorado, and one of few in the nation directed toward women’s health research—the CWHR has helped to ensure the future of women’s health research and sex difference research at the Anschutz Medical Campus.

“It is an extraordinary honor to hold this chair, and it has been inspiring to see the community show such partnership and support for our mission,” says Regensteiner, who is nationally recognized as a leading advocate for women’s health research and whose internationally regarded research focuses on the effects of diabetes on the cardiovascular system. “We are confident that CWHR will return the favor—as a foundation for groundbreaking research that will help improve treatment of many diseases, beginning with cardiovascular disease and diabetes in women.”

The endowed chair also is a mark of prestige for the CWHR as the center seeks to grow its profile and impact regionally and nationally. Regensteiner co-founded CWHR in 2004 with colleagues Joann Lindenfeld, MD, and Lorna Moore, PhD, with the goal of increasing the body of knowledge about the impacts of cardiovascular disease and diabetes on women. The three-part mission of the CWHR is to conduct key research on women’s health and sex differences, mentor the next generation of researchers in women’s health and sex differences, and educate the public and health care providers.

More than 30 advisory board members and other individuals from the Denver community made gifts to the chair, led by Judith and Joseph Wagner, who committed $1 million to the effort—half of which was a matching grant to spur added community support.

“This center has been built upon the contributions from influential women and men throughout the region—gifts of time, ideas, and resources,” says Judith Wagner, who was the founding chair of the CWHR advisory board. “With Judy Regensteiner’s leadership, we know the work accomplished by the center will ultimately save lives.”

Many unanswered questions remain regarding the differences of men and women in terms of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of many different diseases. Medical research rarely addressed these issues until relatively recently; until the early 1990s, women were systematically excluded from many clinical trials, for fear it would harm their reproductive capabilities.

Currently, 24 junior researchers are affiliated with the CWHR and are mentored by its senior faculty as well as other faculty at the university. As an interdisciplinary group, these junior faculty specialize in endocrinology, cardiology, pediatrics, or gerontology, and women’s health and/or sex difference research is an integral aspect of their various projects. The CWHR has also received significant grant funding including $2.5 million, five-year training grant from the Office of Women’s Health Research at the National Institutes of Health.

Each fall CWHR also hosts a highly successful community luncheon, with high-profile speakers including restaurateur Alice Waters and radio host Mother Love. The next luncheon (Sept. 26) will feature a speaker on the topic of sleep disorders. Other CWHR educational events seek to educate health care providers as well as community members.

Eklund, senior counsel at Ballard Spahr LLP, brings to this role substantial experience and passion for the University of Colorado. He has served on the CU Foundation Board of Trustees since 2005, in roles including vice chair and chair of the membership and governance committees. He earned a B.A. from CU-Boulder in 1967, and a J.D. from the CU Law School in 1971.

May, president of financial services firm ALPS Fund Services, also builds on experience in volunteer leadership roles at the foundation, including as Trustee sine 2006 and as chair of the audit and compensation committees. Heearned a B.S. from the University of Colorado Boulder in 1992.

Additionally, the following volunteer leaders have been elected to three-year terms as directors and trustees of the CU Foundation. All new volunteer leadership roles are effective November 1.

Board of Directors
David C. Baker, Greenwood Village
Michael F. Imhoff, Greenwood Village
James C.T. Linfield, Boulder
Dawn F. Wood, Denver

Board of Trustees
Michael D. Fryt, Cordova, Tenn.
Michael J. Gerber, Denver
Edward A. Holloway, Timnath
Gary M. Jacobs, Boulder
Nan E. Joesten, Alameda, Calif.
Douglas H. Kelsall, Englewood
David T. Lougee, Great Falls, Va,
Gary D. Meggison, Lakewood
Brett D. Nicholas, Mill Valley, Calif.
James (“Jay”) S. Ogsbury, Greenwood Village
David R. Santistevan, Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.
Donatella P. Scanniello, Boulder
D. Randall Weeks, Denver

Members of the Board of Directors have fiduciary oversight of the CU Foundation. Members of the Board of Trustees serve as volunteer leaders of the Foundation through their contributions of private support and advocacy for the University of Colorado.

Founded in 1967, the nonprofit CU Foundation partners with the University of Colorado to raise, manage, and invest private support for the university’s benefit. More than 200,000 donors to date have contributed to Creating Futures, a $1.5 billion fundraising campaign to enhance University of Colorado education, research, outreach, and health programs benefiting citizens throughout and beyond Colorado. Visit www.cufund.org for more information.

The Colorado Health Links program will be located in the school’s new Center for Worker Health and Environment, currently in development.  The new program and its home center will leverage the school’s existing expertise in wellness and workplace safety, alongside its established relationship with Pinnacol Assurance.
“Pinnacol Assurance is proud to partner with the Colorado School of Public Health to develop Colorado Health Links,” states Jeff Tetrick, Chief Financial Officer, Pinnacol Assurance. “The program’s goal, to improve the health and economic well-being of Colorado businesses, workers and their families by enhancing wellness at work and home, aligns with Pinnacol’s existing efforts to improve worksite wellness through our Health Risk Management (HRM) pilot study.”

Pinnacol Assurance launched the HRM in 2010. With technical assistance from Colorado School of Public Health Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Lee Newman, MD, the school is helping the insurer evaluate changes in workers’ compensation costs, changes in productivity, and health of employees.  The new workplace program is a continuation of Pinnacol’s partnership with the Colorado School of Public Health, and is expected to bring added value to the insurer’s policy holders and broader Colorado workforce.

“With this gift, Pinnacol Assurance has taken another proactive step to improve the health of Coloradans,” said Dr. Newman. “With this support, and with the help of our community partners and small businesses, the program will determine the most practical ways of improving the health of workers and their families. The program will also establish how worksite wellness benefits the Colorado economy. We thank Pinnacol Assurance for its commitment to workplace health and safety and the unique partnership with the Colorado School of Public Health,” he added.

“We believe this partnership will help develop solutions that result in a stronger economy, healthier communities and a more productive workforce,” states Tetrick.

To learn more about the Health Risk Management Program, visit Pinnacol Assurance, http://www.pinnacol.com/employer/health-risk-management/. To learn more about the Colorado School of Public Health’s worker health and safety programs, visit the Mountain and Plains Education and Research Center, http://maperc.ucdenver.edu.

About Pinnacol Assurance
Pinnacol Assurance is Colorado’s leading provider of workers’ compensation insurance. Pinnacol provides comprehensive, competitively priced coverage; immediate attention to claims; a highly qualified network of medical providers; and proactive safety programs to approximately 55,000 Colorado businesses. Since 2005, Pinnacol has returned more than $472 million in general dividends to its policyholders statewide ― a mark of the company’s stable and strong financial health. For more information, visit www.pinnacol.com.

About the Colorado School of Public Health
The Colorado School of Public Health is the first and only accredited school of public health in the Rocky Mountain Region, attracting top tier faculty and students from across the country, and providing a vital contribution towards ensuring our region’s health and well-being. Collaboratively formed by the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and the University of Northern Colorado, the Colorado School of Public Health provides training, innovative research and community service to actively address public health issues, including chronic disease, access to health care, environmental threats, emerging infectious diseases, and costly injuries. http://publichealth.ucdenver.edu