Boulder: Education and Research

Boulder: Education and Research

Elementary and Secondary Schools

The Boulder Valley School District regulates the public schools in Boulder as well as the neighboring communities of Broomfield, Lafayette, Louisville, Mountain, Nederland, and Superior. The district's open enrollment policy enables students to enroll in a variety of schools, including focus or alternative schools. The board, comprised of seven members elected at-large to four-year terms, employs the superintendent.

The following is a summary of data regarding Boulder public schools as of the 2004–2005 school year.

Total enrollment: 27,947

Number of facilities elementary schools: 24

middle schools: 8

senior high schools: 5

other: 15 (including 3 charter schools, 8 focus schools, and 4 combined-level schools)

Student/teacher ratio: 17:1

Teacher salaries

minimum: $30,239

maximum: $74,479

Funding per pupil: $6,021

A number of private and parochial schools also serve the Boulder area.

Public Schools Information: Boulder Valley School District, 6500 Arapahoe, Boulder, CO 80303; telephone (303)447-1010

Colleges and Universities

Boulder is the main campus of the University of Colorado (CU) university system, which also has campuses in Colorado Springs, downtown Denver, and the Health Sciences Center in Aurora and Denver. The Boulder campus is a major research and educational institution, with an enrollment of more than 32,000 students in 2003. It offers 3,400 courses in 150 areas of study, representing 85 majors for bachelor degrees, 70 for master's degrees, and 50 for doctoral degrees. Although the most popular undergraduate programs in 2003 were psychology, pre-journalism and mass communications, and molecular, cellular, and development biology, CU has strong ties to the astronautics and astrophysics disciplines. The university is a primary research center in space sciences, and 16 of its alumni have become astronauts in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) program.

Front Range Community College promotes academic and career advancement through associate degree and certificate programs in business, health, mathematics, advanced sciences, arts and humanities, world languages, computer information sciences, communication, and social sciences. The Naropa University is a Buddhist-inspired institution offering four-year degrees in an academic program that blends intellectual, artistic, and meditative disciplines. Accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, Naropa enrolls more than 450 students in its three Boulder campuses; the school also features internship programs and study-abroad programs in Nepal and Bali, and is home to the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. The Boulder College of Massage Therapy offers a 1,000-hour certificate program in a variety of massage styles, as well as an Associate Degree of Occupational Studies in Massage Therapy.

Libraries and Research Centers

The Boulder Public Library consists of a main building and three branches with a total of more than 435,000 volumes and 1,100 periodical subscriptions. The library maintains special collections of children's literature, a Colorado Artists Registry, and municipal government; it also operates a Braille Computer Center. The Carnegie Branch Library for Local History contains a manuscript collection of more than 700,000 items, including some from before the area received the name Colorado, as well as historic photographs, newspapers, and oral histories. The University of Colorado library system, consisting of the central Norlin Library and five discipline-specific branch libraries, contains more than 11 million books, periodicals, and microforms, as well as special collections in juvenile literature, the history of silver, mountaineering, and Western history. The National Indian Law Library, which houses 4,000 items, is the only law library specializing in practice materials relating to federal and tribal Indian law. The Allen Ginsberg Library of the Naropa University houses books, journals, audio/visual media, and artwork, as well as special collections in university recordings, Tibetan volumes, and small press and chap-books. A number of private and special interest libraries are also located in the city.

The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) received more than $250 million in sponsored research monies in 2003; the two largest sponsors were the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Science Foundation. Its nearly 100 research centers and institutes are involved in everything from music entrepreneurship to high energy physics. Some of the largest facilities are the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, the Institute for Behavioral Genetics, the Institute of Cognitive Science, the Colorado Center for Information Storage, the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, and the Laboratory of Atmospheric and Space Physics. Three CU professors are recipients of a Nobel Prize, the most recent bestowed in 2001 for the discovery of a new form of matter.

Boulder is home to several research institutions of the federal government. The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences is a joint venture of CU and the National Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. The National Weather Service maintains a weather forecast office in the city, which provides weather forecasts and data for 21 counties in Colorado. The National Center for Atmospheric Research offers free, guided tours of such exhibits as lightning, a tornado, a solar eclipse telescope, and aircraft models. Visitors can view the atomic clock and other science displays at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which attracts 100 visiting researchers each year in addition to its 400 resident scientists, engineers, and other personnel.

Public Library Information: Boulder Public Library, 1000 Canyon Blvd., Boulder, CO 80302; telephone (303)441-3100