[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 12] [Extensions of Remarks] [Pages 16860-16862] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]TRIBUTE TO ELIZABETH HOFFMAN ______ HON. MARK UDALL of colorado in the house of representatives Tuesday, September 11, 2001 Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Elizabeth Hoffman, President of the University of Colorado. As Betsy enters her second year on the job, I can proudly say that CU is well on its way to fulfilling her vision of becoming one of the top three public research universities in the country. During her first year in office, CU has set records in private gift giving, federal research income and state capitol construction funding. One of these gifts, a $250 million donation, is the largest gift ever to a public university. This donation allowed for the creation of a CU institute that will help twenty million Americans with cognitive disabilities. In addition to her drive to make CU a world class university, Betsy Hoffman knows that the University of Colorado is also a school for the people of Colorado. She travels tirelessly around the state to ``bring CU back to the people of Colorado.'' She has quickly gained the support of the people of our state in her endeavors. Governor Owens says, ``She's been very good at representing the university around the state. I give her an A plus.'' She is also supported by state legislators on both sides of the aisle and by members of the Colorado congressional delegation. Under Betsy's leadership, I have no doubt that CU will become the world class university she is steering it toward. I am including an article about her that was recently published in the Denver Post. Mr. Speaker, I ask for my colleagues to join me in praising the work of a visionary and an educator. [From the Denver Post, September 2, 2001] CU Chief Earns Fans, High Marks HOFFMAN'S FIRST YEAR BRINGS RECORD FUNDRAISING, LOFTY GOALS (By Dave Curtin) The glow of a 10-inch TV illuminates the darkened office of University of Colorado President Betsy Hoffman at 8:15 on a rainy Thursday morning. She's trying to decide which of four infomercials she likes best to tout CU before 35 million football viewers. As Hoffman enters her second year as CU's president, she's looking for a commercial that sets the tone for the CU she dreams of--a school that is among the top three public universities in the nation. Hoffman's first year was record-setting for CU in private gift-giving, federal research income and state capital construction funding. She's worked to improve faculty salaries. She's received bipartisan support in the legislature--a feat skeptics said a rookie president would struggle mightily to accomplish. ``There's no way I could have ended up in a better place than here,'' she says. ``This is [[Page 16861]] the luck of the draw and I came out on top. To be the president of CU is one of the greatest opportunities in this country.'' Every school in the Big 12 Conference gets a free 30-second spot to promote themselves during televised sporting events. Hoffman wanted something other than the usual students in labs with test tubes. So the infomercial features a technical climber on a rock wall. A creek rushes below. The first version proudly brags of CU's Fulbright and Rhodes scholars and Nobel Prize winner. Hoffman balks. ``We want to recruit students and their parents--not scholars--in this spot,'' she says. In one version Hoffman concludes by saying, ``Come join us.'' But when it was test-marketed on employees some complained that ``it sounds like she's asking you to join a cult,'' an aide offers. Hoffman laughs. ``Oh, give me a break!'' she says. It's the first 10 minutes of an 11-hour day. 8:30-10 a.m. Vice presidents' meeting, president's office: Seven people, including four vice presidents and the treasurer, gather around a conference table in Hoffman's quaint cottage office in Boulder. Hoffman runs a cordial meeting. She pokes fun at one person's microscopic handwriting. ``Students at the California Institute of Technology compete to see who can get an entire semester's notes on one page,'' she says. ``They write bigger than this.'' She's ribbing chief of staff J.D. Beatty, one of a handful of her new recruits this year. That light-heartedness is typical of Hoffman. Recently before a regent's meeting, the 6-foot president doffed her high heels and challenged the veeps and regents to a pick-up basketball game at the Coors Events Center. Today, she's left her shoes on. The brain trust meets routinely to review the discussion at the regents' meeting a week earlier. This time there had been a tense discussion among regents about offering health benefits to partners of gay employees. The debate has been ongoing for 15 years, but regents will vote on it again Thursday. Hoffman keeps the meeting moving as talk turns to Gov. Bill Owens' new panel to study reorganizing state higher education. It's the third state-ordered study remapping Colorado's higher-ed system in two years and Hoffman takes it very seriously. ``It's extremely important that CU speaks in a single voice so the task force hears the same message from us,'' Hoffman says. At the east end of her office is a mahogany desk. But she rarely uses it. Most of her work is done outside the office. A gold-plated plaque on the corner of the desk is etched with the names of all CU presidents since 1963, with the exception of CU's 17th president, Judith Albino, who brought her own desk. ``Not me,'' Hoffman says. ``I wanted my name on that plaque.'' A 3-foot replica of a $250 million check is displayed on top of a book case. It marks Hoffman's crowning moment in her first year: the largest gift ever to a public university. The gift from software entrepreneurs Bill and Claudia Coleman created a CU institute to help 20 million Americans with cognitive disabilities. Hoffman boldly asked the California couple, who are not CU alums, for the record gift, and it put CU in the national spotlight. In hindsight, she says, it was a risk. They could have taken their money somewhere else. ``You have to take risks to be excellent. If you take the safe route, you'll remain mediocre,'' Hoffman says. ``I had done my homework. I knew Bill liked bold approaches. That's his M.O. And I knew they had a desire to make a big impact.'' Just before that, Hoffman had surprised everyone at a CU Foundation dinner when she and her husband announced they were donating $100,000 to CU. She's the first president to make a six-figure donation, which represented more than a third of her first-year salary of $285,000. She recently received a 15 percent raise, bumping her salary to $327,750. ``I can't ask anyone to make a significant contribution to this university unless I've done so myself,'' she said at the time. Rarely does she take a day off--and that includes weekends, her colleagues say. Most mornings she leaves the president's residence in Boulder at 7-6 if she has a breakfast meeting in Denver. And she has a late-night event nearly every night. She had one evening off earlier in the week. She went grocery shopping. And bought a rain cover for a Sunday trail ride organized by Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell to show support for a Continental Divide transnational trail. On football Saturdays she'll host a brunch at her house and then a breakfast on campus. On Sundays she finds herself at the State Fair in Pueblo or departing for Monday morning speeches in the far corners of the state. ``It's a very intense schedule,'' she says. ``Of all the job requirements, no one ever tells you about the stamina. That's the No. 1 criteria for this job.'' 10:30-11:45 a.m. Videotaping at Folsom Field: Hoffman is hustled over to Folsom for another video shoot as an aide holds a People magazine umbrella over her head in pouring rain. They scamper from office to car. Car to stadium. Hoffman will film a 15-second welcoming video splashed across the 96-foot-wide screen at the new Mile High stadium that was to be played during Saturday's game against Colorado State. She'll also film a 30-second spot for home games at Folsom. The filming must be done today rain or shine, so they've set up inside the athlete's dining hall. ``Her schedule is so wall-to-wall this has to be done now,'' says Bob Nero, an assistant vice president who oversees Hoffman's external relations. Hoffman has a film wardrobe of black and gold hanging in the back seat of her Cadillac STS donated by a Boulder dealership. ``I hope Rachel likes my outfit because I don't feel like dragging all my clothes in,'' she says. Rachel Dee is a contract stylist hired to coordinate the president's clothes, hair and makeup for the camera. On Hoffman's short ride to the stadium, a call is broadcast over her car phone. It's CU's director of federal relations, Tanya Mares Kelly, who splits time between Washington, D.C., and Denver. ``I want to make sure you heard that Bush will make his stem-cell announcement today. I'm guessing you'll be asked to comment,'' Mares Kelly says. Hoffman splashes into the dining hall damp but not drenched. ``Can you restore me?'' Hoffman asks Dee, as the stylist plops a pink beauty bib over her shoulders and dabs at a tray of makeup. A 280-pound lineman fresh off of lunch comes over to introduce himself. Then the president spies star running back Marcus Houston. ``He better be fast because he's not that big,'' Hoffman says. Houston, wearing a T-shirt that reads ``The Competition Starts Here,'' comes over to greet Hoffman. She tell him she's just read an article in Reader's Digest about his foundation for inner-city school kids, ``Just Say Know.'' And Campbell has offered help with the foundation, which puts a smile on Houston's face. ``Are you shooting some ``Go Buffs'' video?'' he asks. ``I'll let you go back to being presidential.'' Dee wipes a spot off Hoffman's black jacket. ``Is there lipstick on my teeth?'' Hoffman asks. No. ``Action! Camera!'' says videographer Shane Anthony. Hoffman, smiling on camera: ``''Everyone in the CU family is delighted that you can join us for the 2001 Rocky Mountain Showdown!'' 11:45 a.m.-l p.m. Meet with Athletic Director Dick Tharp at Folsom Stadium: Hoffman heads downstairs to Tharp's office for an update on CU's $45 million stadium expansion--28 new luxury boxes and 1,950 club seats with views of the Flatirons and scheduled to be ready for the 2003 season. All but eight are sold for $50,000 each. But there's one piece of business that takes her aback. Associate athletic director John Meadows asks the president if she would accept a stadium box on the 20-yard line. Presently the president's box is on the 30. Meadows is trying to place corporate buyers. ``All the seats are good between the zeros,'' Tharp says. But Hoffman is starting a new fundraising program on football Saturdays. She's invited 200 potential donors to be her guests in her box throughout the season, followed by dinner after the game. ``What does that tell them?'' Hoffman worries. ``That they're no more important than the 20? 1 think there's a big difference between the 20 and the 30.'' During football games Hoffman splits her time hosting guests, visiting donors seated in the exclusive Flatirons Club, chatting with legislators, mingling with regents' guests and doing radio in the third quarter. ``And I would like to see the game,'' she says. ``It happens that I like football.'' 1-2 p.m. Lunch in her office: Three catered salade nicoise costing $22.50 await the president and two guests. Hoffman talks excitedly about her 10-year plan to catapult CU into the nation's top three public research universities. ``When people talk about Michigan, Wisconsin or Berkeley, I want them to talk about CU,'' she says. ``Colorado is an afterthought on the national scene. We need to be at the top.'' But is it realistic? ``Absolutely,'' says Gov. Owens. ``Even if she fails we might have the fourth or fifth best research university in the country. You have to strive mightily. And she does.'' What will it take for CU to be among the nation's top three? It will take each of CU's four campuses in Denver, Colorado Springs, Boulder and the Health Sciences Center at Fitzsimons to be nationally ranked on their strengths, Hoffman says. It will require CU to amass a $5 billion endowment by 2010 (its current endowment is $500 million) and $1 billion annually in federally sponsored research, and to collect more than $1 billion by 2004 in a revamped private-gifts campaign she'll announce in November. In 10 years, all CU colleges and programs should be named for donors who pay $25 million to $50 million, Hoffman says. ``Ten years from now,'' she says, ``I want people to think of the CU Hospital like they think of the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins.'' [[Page 16862]] 2-3:30 p.m. Speech writing: Hoffman will give five speeches in four days in Gunnison, Alamosa and Denver. She doesn't have jokes written into her speeches. ``I don't read jokes well,'' she says. Instead she spontaneously spices her talks with personal anecdotes. She'll come off the trail ride near Keystone on Sunday to give a noon speech to a community group in Gunnison on Monday. That's followed by three talks in Alamosa on Tuesday and Wednesday. She'll be in Denver on Thursday to speak at the CUDenver convocation. The three-day San Luis Valley trip is one in a series of rural Colorado ``community tours'' Hoffman initiated. When she became president she vowed to ``bring CU back to the people of Colorado.'' ``She comes over to the Western Slope and that's played very well over here,'' says state Rep. Gayle Berry, R-Grand Junction. Hoffman's goal when she took office was to meet Colorado's federal delegation and all 101 state lawmakers before the legislature convened in 2001. She came within five. Still, some skeptics wondered how a rookie president could pull purse strings in the legislature. ``I think she's been a refreshing breath of fresh air,'' says Berry, a member of the powerful Joint Budget Committee. ``She has a very engaging personality and she's worked very hard in the legislature.'' While the rural tours are equal doses student recruitment and PR, Hoffman sees them on a higher plane. ``Getting out there and being part of all the communities is extremely important,'' she says. On the tours she hosts ``mini-colleges''--a lecture by top professors such as anthropologist Dennis Van Gerven talking about mummies in the Nile Valley. ``People can see what a student gets to experience,'' Hoffman says. ``It erases the myths about Boulder and the image of the ``People's Republic of Boulder.''' Now it's time to make her speeches sing with speechwriter Brad Bolander. ``The introduction's too long,'' she says. She suggests condensing three paragraphs into one easy-to- understand sentence. ``The talking points are too dense,'' she says. ``I'm not going to read all this. I want to keep eye contact.'' As for her 10-year game plan--she can talk about that from the heart. At a dinner party the night before, she was asked to elaborate extemporaneously on her vision after a couple glasses of wine. ``I was afraid I would forget one of the points,'' she says. ``It was one of your best speeches ever,'' says husband Brian Binger, an adjunct economics professor, who has stopped in to the office to lend a hand with the speech writing. ``Maybe you should always work that way.'' Hoffman's the morning person in the family; Binger the night person. He often drives her home from late-night, out- of-town dinners while she sleeps. On the way to an engagement in Alamosa last spring, he drove while she did the taxes. Binger and Hoffman will head to campus for the Economics Institute graduation dinner, where Hoffman will give the commencement address. The institute is a 30-year-old summer-long program in Boulder to prepare non-U.S. citizens to go to business graduate schools in the U.S. For years it's used a textbook co-authored by Hoffman and Binger. Graduates include former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, the president of the Central Bank of Buenos Aires, ministers of finance in Mexico and Indonesia and the director of Fuji Bank in Japan. The graduation will be preceded by a champagne reception. ``I don't think I better have any champagne,'' Hoffman tells her husband. ``Yeah, it's only 4 p.m.,'' Binger says. ``The day's only half over.'' ____________________