Penley Panel

Colorado State University students are not sitting passively in classrooms; they’re developing real-world solutions to real-world problems. CSU engineering students, for example, have designed an urban search-and-rescue robot that will save lives during disasters and a virtual-reality dog that will teach vet med students how to apply acupuncture.

In addition to CSU’s Good Samaritan robot and SimPooch the virtual dog, this issue of The Competitive Edge also highlights how monitoring the health of Colorado’s livestock is critical on a local, state, and national level as CSU scientists study infectious diseases that can taint our food supply or be used as weapons of bioterrorism.

Colorado State obviously offers more than an "animal" education. While much of our veterinary medicine research translates to the human condition, this month we also feature CSU scientists whose research will help us better predict weather conditions across the globe and decrease the cancer risk for astronauts in space.

Considering such research and the recent Colorado Department of Higher Education report that quantifies the impact of public higher education on the state of Colorado (higher education institutions add $4.25 billion in wages and salaries and nearly $387 million annually in taxes to the Colorado economy, according to the report), it's safe to say that that the investment in Colorado's college students is a sound investment in our state.

Thank you for joining us.

Larry Edward Penley
Chancellor and President