Dear faculty and staff,

We hope you are enjoying the summer and finding time to spend with friends and family as well as taking care of yourselves. To that end, we wanted to share some good news.

For the past several months, we have been leading a committee of faculty, staff, and students through an analysis of CU Denver’s holiday calendar. We’ve done so with an eye toward:

• Creating consistency
• Reviewing the dates through a diversity and equity lens
• Finding ways to use the calendar to maximize student success

As part of this process, we also want to provide clarity that CU Denver holidays don’t always align perfectly with the other CU campuses because our schedule is, some ways, contingent on the operating schedule of the Auraria Higher Education Center (AHEC) and the Auraria Campus. We also recognize that being as planful as possible is critical to maintaining healthy campus operations and that late changes to the calendar can disrupt family care arrangements and can impact vacation plans. We kept all that and more in mind during our work.

Late last month, we sent our recommendation to Chancellor Michelle Marks, who approved the holiday list for 2023-2024. We expect it to stay consistent moving forward.

The new holiday schedule includes 13 total holidays: 12 specific dates and one floating day to be used between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024. The days for the 2023-24 year are:

• July 4: Independence Day
• Sept. 4: Labor Day
• Nov. 23: Thanksgiving
• Dec. 25-Dec. 29 (Winter Break)
• Jan. 1: New Year's Day
• Jan. 15: Martin Luther King Jr. Day
• May 27: Memorial Day
• June 19: Juneteenth
• One floating holiday (employee choice)

In addition to the list above, the Governor has granted state employees an administrative day for Monday, July 3. At CU Denver, campus will remain open on July 3, and all planned classes will take place to ensure instructional continuity. That noted, all CU Denver employees (both faculty and staff) will be granted 8 hours of administrative time off to mark this holiday. If you are not teaching or don’t need to be on campus on July 3, you can take your administrative day on July 3. For everyone else, you can use this time on any day in FY24. Please check in with your supervisor to discuss your schedule for this day.

While we cannot predict additional unplanned holidays based on state action (for example, the Governor sometimes grants the provision of additional days off around Thanksgiving), the list outlined above provides a foundation to plan around.

We want to take a moment to thank the committee members for their hard and thoughtful work. There was much discussion representing many perspectives. In keeping with our desire to provide consistency and reliability moving forward, our Human Resources team will communicate any changes to the holiday calendar should they be needed.

Have a wonderful summer,

Antonio Farias, Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

teri engelke, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Human Resources