Center for Access and Campus Engagement (CACE)

Services

CU Denver's Center for Access and Campus Engagement provides services to support underrepresented students and promote a diverse and inclusive campus for all students, faculty, and staff. ACE provides vital links to the culturally rich and diverse community surrounding CU Denver.

About Us

To provide services to support underrepresented students and to promote an inclusive campus for all students, faculty, and staff.

We are:

A vital source for helping underrepresented students to persist, thrive, and graduate.
A home away from home that facilitates students' academic, personal, and social development.
A recognized leader in offering activities to the campus community to enrich cultural awareness.
A valued partner with other units on campus that provide services for student success.
A bridge that connects students to the campus, external communities, and their future as alumni of the University of Colorado Denver.

Community

ACE recognizes that collaborations with faculty, staff, and external partners are essential to strengthening and sustaining an inclusive campus. By working together, we provide engagement opportunities for historically underrepresented students and create a home away from home.

Justice

ACE recognizes that striving for a more socially just society is critical to the success and livelihood of our students. We enact justice as a process and a goal towards a vision for a society where people from all social groups have equal access to resources and opportunities and feel physically and psychologically safe and secure.

Learning & Scholarship

ACE recognizes that some voices have historically been excluded in the academy. We advance CU Denver's educational mission by providing counter-narratives and raising awareness of untold stories to foster critical thinking and reflection about issues that impact marginalized communities. ACE serves as an academic partner that values excellence in scholarship, in order to retain and graduate underrepresented students at CU Denver while also promoting lifelong learning.

Resilience

ACE recognizes that many of our students have developed resilience because of the challenges they have and/or currently endure. ACE affirms, supports, and strengthens underrepresented students and their processes of adaptation in the face of adversity, trauma, threat, and other sources of stress. ACE staff endeavors to model and embody resilience while teaching students to be agents of social change.

Leadership

ACE recognizes the lack of diversity in key leadership roles in higher education and other contexts in the United States. ACE empowers student leaders while encouraging them to challenge the ways society continues to marginalize underrepresented populations. ACE offers leadership programs to prepare students to become change agents on campus, in society, and in their prospective careers.