Public U Leaders Spotlight: Michelle Marks

Your Name: Michelle Marks
Your Title: Chancellor
Your Institution: University of Colorado Denver
Year You Started Your Current Role: 2020

What’s the most exciting work the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities is currently undertaking?
I am the chair of the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities (USU), and we are engaged in a process of continued development and realization of USU’s identity and value proposition right now. We’re gathering feedback from member institutions to help strengthen our organizational identity, review our value proposition and membership model, and situate that identity and value proposition within the higher ed landscape strategically.

What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing individuals in your role on campus?
CU Denver is located right in the heart of downtown Denver, and the last few years have been tough on cities. There is a lot of opportunity in reimagining the way people live, play, learn, and earn, and we’re involved in some fascinating conversations right now about how our downtown campus can be an anchor for lifelong learning in a redeveloping urban core.

What are the most important and valuable partnerships on campus for individuals in your role?
My relationships across campus are critical: strong partnerships with students, faculty, and staff are essential to making informed decisions that impact our community. Across metro Denver, I work with the mayor and his team; fellow higher ed leaders; employers that hire our graduates; business, foundation, and nonprofit leaders; and of course our alumni and supporters.

Describe your university in three words.
Meeting the moment

What makes your university great?
CU Denver is a public urban research university that works for all: learners of all kinds and at all stages of life, industries and employers that need talent ready to hit the ground running, and communities requiring new solutions and discoveries. By making education more accessible to more people in an urban setting, we are driving social mobility, creating workforce pipelines, and serving as a convener that tackles the grandest challenges facing our society.

What experience best prepared your current role?
Holding several different kinds of roles in academia, from tenured faculty member to overseeing graduate education to Vice President of Innovation and New Ventures. Being able to deeply understand the issues and relate to people both inside and outside of campus has been helpful.

If you could go back and give yourself advice on the first day of your job, what would you say?
That was summer of 2020 – I would have told myself, “Just remember that no one else has any experience leading through a pandemic either…”

What is your favorite way to spend your free time? Doing almost anything outside in Colorado – hiking, biking, skiing.

What is the best book you’ve read recently?  Shantaram.

What is your favorite TV show? Ted Lasso.  

What was the last thing you cooked or baked? Maryland Crab Cakes.

What is the last movie you saw in the theater? Oppenheimer.

What is the last concert you attended? Andrea Bocelli in Denver’s Ball Arena

If you could travel to one place you’ve never visited, where would it be and why? Gorilla Trekking in Rwanda. That’s at the top of the Bucket List.