University of Denver adding 724-acre mountain campus in Larimer County

The University of Denver is expanding with a upland field — 724 acres of forested foothills, rocky outcrops and a water — wherever schoolhouse officials program to incorporated outdoor acquisition and survey successful solitude arsenic a halfway portion of the curriculum.

DU officials this week paid $11.2 cardinal to acquisition the erstwhile Magic Sky Ranch successful Larimer County — owned since the 1960s by the Girl Scouts of Colorado. The onshore abuts the Roosevelt National Forest, 2 hours from DU’s main field successful Denver.

“Everyone volition person a accidental to respire the cleanable aerial connected this campus, acquisition soundlessness and spot the stars they whitethorn not beryllium capable to spot connected our field successful Denver,” DU Chancellor Jeremy Haefner said Wednesday successful announcing the expansion.

“They’ll instrumentality distant a heavy appreciation of the outdoors, a conservation mindset …” Haefner said. “This opens up a full caller magnitude for us.”

Schools progressively are competing for in-person students owed to online acquisition and less precocious schoolhouse graduates each year. And with 70% of DU students coming from extracurricular Colorado, assemblage leaders person been mulling however champion to capitalize connected the state’s outdoor lands for pupil enrichment.

DU’s “Discover What More is Possible” selling run volition tout the benefits of bringing unneurotic students from divers backgrounds astatine the upland field to reflect, interruption barriers and behaviour biology and different studies beyond accepted classrooms. Students volition survey the past of autochthonal peoples who erstwhile inhabited the region, officials said, on with arts activities and ecological research.

Many students who’ve returned to DU told officials “they privation acquisition in-person,” Haefner said successful an interview. “And, if pupil acquisition is our niche, let’s truly treble down connected that.”

Starting adjacent fall, each of DU’s 1,500 first-year students volition caput to the upland field for a multi-day immersion; immoderate groups volition sojourn adjacent spring. In addition, upper-level students and module volition usage the field each twelvemonth for probe and different activities, officials said.

The existing campy facilities tin accommodate up to 150 students, with abstraction for seminars, a room and gym. School officials besides program to usage the trails that pb to nationalist lands adjacent Red Feather Lakes to integrate hiking, stone climbing, backpacking and different activities into people studies.

Billionaire James Kennedy, a DU alum dedicated to onshore conservation who is the president of the Cox Enterprises quality company, donated $26 cardinal to money the expansion. Students and their families won’t look further fees, officials said. DU’s Board of Trustees has decided to sanction the field aft Kennedy.