Educational Approach
Learn by doing
At DU, we believe the genius is in the doing. Through our Four-Dimensional (4D) Experience, students take part in small, focused classes, where they improve understanding through conversations that draw from the vast range of experiences and perspectives of our diverse community.
Learning here goes far beyond the lecture hall. We create opportunities for research, scholarship, performance and engagement. Our students collaborate with peers and faculty across disciplines and explore the subjects that move them. In the process, they develop important skills, find meaning and fuel their passions through exploration and collaboration with peers and faculty across disciplines.
Our students work with professors and patients to examine how chemicals in foods like tea and chocolate could help with the effects of ALS. They collaborate with Nike to develop footwear that enhances performance and reduces injuries. Immersion programs prepare students to provide aid in humanitarian crises and understand the health needs and difficulties of the homeless.
Students gain knowledge and direction from lively, discussion-based classes, internships and community engagement. They work here in Denver to ensure children in the foster system have the support they need and collaborate with locals in Panama to protect biodiversity. Wherever they are, we make sure our students can use their passion to create a better world.
A Four-Dimensional Experience
Personalized experience with global reach
We seek students who want to chart their own paths and make. Whether they pursue careers as novelists or entrepreneurs, chemists or musicians, our students are driven by boldness, passion and innovation as they work to achieve their own vision of greatness and enrich and improve their communities and the world by sharing it.
Our student-to-faculty ratio is 11:1, and our average class size is 21 students, allowing us to base learning around conversation and multiple perspectives. Over 200 degree programs provide students the flexibility to find a course of study that will excite and engage them throughout their college careers. And over 70 percent of our undergraduates study internationally at some point in their DU careers, returning to campus with a wealth of perspectives that help them become global leaders in the public, private and nonprofit sectors.
We draw on rich communities throughout Denver and beyond to offer even more opportunities to contribute and learn. Students in our Lamont School of Music are active in Denver's music scene, and our theatre students travel to Scotland to participate in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. No matter their passion, our students find ways to deepen their education and make the world a better place.
21 Average class size: 21 students With smaller classes, our students receive needed personal attention from faculty.
11:1 Student-to-faculty ratio: 11:1 Our faculty have time to focus on their students' needs and to loop undergraduates and graduates into their research.
200+ 200+ degree programs Across our various schools and colleges, we cultivate learning and knowledge for both undergraduates and graduates.
Learning by Doing
DU Students Fight ALS
A team of undergraduate and graduate researchers is trying to determine how nutraceuticals — food components used for medicinal purposes — might protect the neurons in the brain that underlie neurological diseases.
DU Training Ugandans
Eight thousand miles away from the University of Denver campus, DU students are helping Ugandans receive the training they need to enter the workforce and improve their quality of life.
First-year Seminar
Whether they study immigrant stories or magnetism, cartography or comedy, the mathematics of gambling or pop culture and fourth-wave feminism, students find a stimulating and unconventional way to begin their DU experience with the first-year seminar.
Some students explore Denver on a graffiti tour in a seminar on global hip-hop music or on a ghost walk as they study monsters in literature and film. Others visit archaeological sites to deepen their understanding of Colorado's native culture or tour a graveyard and consider the significance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Students meet their first-year seminar classes during Discoveries week, when they first arrive at the University. The week ends with a destination trip, where they'll get to know their classmates and their faculty mentor, who will serve as their advisor for their first year until they declare a major.
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