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CU Receives Largest Gift Ever Given Public University
Quarter-Billion Dollars to Fund Institute for Cognitive Disabilities
DENVER, Colo. (Jan. 16)--University of Colorado president Elizabeth Hoffman today accepted the largest gift ever given an American public university--$250 million--from Bill Coleman, founder and chairman of BEA Systems of San Jose, Calif., and his wife, Claudia, a former manager with Hewlett-Packard. The endowment will fund advanced research and development of innovative technologies to enhance the lives of people with cognitive disabilities. Cognitive disabilities are associated with a number of conditions, such as mental retardation and developmental disabilities.
The quarter-billion-dollar endowment, to be paid over five years, will be used to establish the University of Colorado Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities.
"This unprecedented gift is a tribute to the Colemans' generosity and vision, as well as to the university's growing reputation for work in developmental disabilities and assistive technology," said Hoffman. "The Colemans' vision, as well as ours, is that the Institute will make CU the international center of excellence in developing adaptive assistive technologies, based on advanced biomedical and computer science research, for people with cognitive disabilities."
Hoffman said, the gift would be used primarily to build on existing interdisciplinary research and develop new and creative multi-campus partnerships. A small portion may be used to enhance facilities for these activities.
"The Institute is designed to break through the barriers that separate a wide array of programs and encourage the cross-pollination of ideas that foster real innovation," Hoffman said.
Bill Coleman, a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and a former executive with Sun Microsystems, said the idea for the gift stems from a tour of CU's Center for LifeLong Learning and Design following his visit as a guest lecturer in a freshman computer science class.
"I saw some of the incredible research being done in cognitive science, including the use of computer-based technologies to support lifelong learning and online community building," Coleman said. "I saw a connection with the work my company, BEA Systems, has been doing with the development of personalization technology for the Internet and possible techniques to help those with cognitive disabilities."
Coleman said that he and his wife, who have a niece with special needs, understand the benefits and the promise new technologies can offer people with cognitive disabilities.
"We have witnessed the challenges this population faces every day with problem solving, reasoning skills and understanding and using language," he said. "I passionately believe that we as a society have the intelligence and the responsibility to develop technologies that will expand the ability of those with cognitive disabilities to learn, to understand and to communicate."
In addition to developmental disabilities, such as Down Syndrome and autism, the term "cognitive disability" covers a wide range of conditions in which cognitive functioning is impaired, including certain traumatic brain injuries, stroke and various forms of dementia such as Alzheimer's disease.
Coleman said he hopes the Institute will create a "space program effect" through which adaptive assistive technologies developed for people with cognitive disabilities will find application in the broader population.
The Colemans, who have a home in Aspen, Colo., plan to play an active role in the Institute. They said the gift would not have been made without Hoffman's personal commitment to the project and the "incredibly strong" team of researchers CU has marshaled to support the initiative.
"I have made a personal commitment to leverage the Colemans' gift by obtaining additional funding from government, individuals and industry," Hoffman said. "I expect this exciting enterprise to become the premier example of the new 'venture philanthropy,' which, I believe, will have a central role in shaping research universities in the 21st century."
The Coleman Institute will be the first system-wide institute in CU's history. Helping design the Institute are Michael Lightner, Ph.D., associate dean for Special Projects in CU Boulder's College of Engineering and Applied Science, and David Braddock, Ph.D., a leading expert on cognitive disabilities, head of the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago and former president of the American Association on Mental Retardation.
Lightner said one of the challenges facing the cognitive disabilities field is to understand how people with cognitive disabilities learn and perceive the world around them, and then to develop tools that complement an individual's own brain function and continuously learn from the user's daily activities.
"There have been many assistive technology devices for people with cognitive disabilities, ranging from simple homemade systems to sophisticated communication enhancers and prompting systems," Lightner said. "But what we've found is that the current devices tend to be relatively expensive, often cumbersome and, most importantly, they do not continuously and automatically adapt to the environment of the user.
"Current data reveal that, for a variety of reasons, about half of assistive technology devices for those with cognitive disabilities are abandoned within three months. Building on advances in biomedical research, computer technologies for continuous learning, adaptation and customization, and the convergence of computing and communications, one of the Institute's goals is to significantly reduce the abandonment rate and improve the quality of many types of assistive devices for those living with cognitive disabilities," he said.
Braddock said the scope of the cognitive disabilities field is such that the new Institute must develop partnerships across multiple disciplines at CU and eventually involve other universities and research organizations. The Institute also must establish partnerships with private, state, national and international support programs.
"The Institute has the capacity to create a bridge among health sciences, computer science, information science and technology, and special education and to create a research focus that provides critical mass that's truly a beacon of light and hope for individuals with cognitive disabilities and their families," said Braddock.
The Institute's activities will begin with a partnership between CU's Boulder campus and the CU Health Sciences Center campus. As the Institute develops, all four CU campuses, which also include CU Colorado Springs and CU Denver, will be involved in the Institute's work.
On the Boulder campus, the Institute's initial focus will be in the College of Engineering and Applied Science, where work has already begun in the Computer Science Department's Center for LifeLong Learning and Design. Also involved will be the College of Engineering's nationally recognized educational programs in the Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory (ITLL) and the Discovery Learning Center (DLC). The ITLL focuses on hands-on, teams-based education and the DLC integrates undergraduates into the College's research activities.
Other CU Boulder partners offering expertise in the area of cognitive disabilities include the Institute of Cognitive Sciences, the Psychology Department, the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Science and the Center for Spoken Language Understanding.
A key to the Institute's success will be the partnership between researchers on the Boulder campus and the Health Sciences Center, where CU has internationally recognized researchers and clinicians in the area of developmental disabilities. The Health Sciences Center researchers include experts in assistive technology, autism, fragile X syndrome, augmentative communication and communication research for those with cognitive disabilities. The Health Sciences Center and its affiliated institutes are also known for biomedical research into the causes of Down Syndrome and ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease).
The work at the Health Sciences Center is currently focused in the departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, the Colorado Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (one of just 14 in the nation), the JFK Partners (founded in 1966) and the affiliated Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.
The University of Colorado system is comprised of four campuses, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Denver and the Health Sciences Center. The campuses have a combined enrollment of approximately 46,000 students.
The University of Colorado ranks 15th among public universities and colleges in overall research expenditures and ninth among public universities in federally funded research. Sponsored research activities within the university system generate approximately $450 million per year. Elizabeth Hoffman has been President of the University of Colorado system since September 1, 2000.
Contacts: Bob Nero or Brad Bohlander
University of Colorado, Office of Institutional Relations
303.492.6206
Nero Cell: 303.263.2191
Bohlander Cell: 303.908.0279