The front entrance of the Environmental Design building on Sept. 30, 2026. (CU Independent/Austin Coleman)
Stephanie Schmitt, a senior studying sustainable planning and urban design at the University of Colorado Boulder, was admitted to the university as a student in the Program of Environmental Design. Now, she is a student in the College of Media, Design and Information.
Schmitt didn’t transfer into a new program. On July 1, 2025, ENVD integrated with the College of Media, Communication and Information, creating what is now known as CMDI. Former CU Boulder Provost Russell Moore initiated the integration in 2023 before stepping down. Within the past year, students, faculty and staff have experienced a variety of changes, including changes to graduation, curriculum, student life and the structure of the now-department as a whole.
Many students weren’t aware of the administrative aspects of the integration process for the creation of CMDI. Instead, most have focused on student-facing changes after the integration.
“As a student, you don’t get much information about what the administrative process is with your major, right?” Schmitt said. “So like, a lot of the student questions were like, ‘Well, what about our graduation? What about our curriculum? What about our degree?”
Before its integration, ENVD was housed under the Graduate School. According to the university, the Academic Review and Planning Advisory Committee advised that ENVD should be moved into an administrative home and out of the Graduate School’s oversight, as ENVD largely serves undergraduate students.
Jade Polizzi, a teaching professor in ENVD and a licensed architect, has been with the now department since 2002. She said that ENVD has a history of moving around campuses and colleges, particularly between the University of Colorado Denver’s campus and CU Boulder’s campus.
In 2012, ENVD was moved from CU Denver’s campus to the graduate school, which would serve as a temporary holding place for the program.
Moore had identified CMCI as a good college for ENVD to be moved to, due to them both having creative design well-integrated into their departments.
According to Polizzi, ENVD doesn’t have any graduate students, and that moving to CMCI has given the opportunity for a dean to be better invested in the undergraduate ENVD students.
“I think Lori really is invested in our program and really wants to see us succeed and wants to, like, find synergies within like the different departments in CMDI,” Polizzi said.
Changes to academic funding and opportunities
Under CMDI, ENVD has greater access to scholarship and grant funding, according to the university. The university has identified no adverse funding impacts for ENVD as a result of the integration.
“ENVD students, faculty and staff have also gained access to additional professional development opportunities, technology equipment and other resources that were not previously available,” university spokesperson Sarah Barwacz said in an email interview.
Under CMDI, studio class sizes have decreased to 14-18 students per class. Prior to the integration, class sizes were 18-24 students, which is considered large for a studio class, according to Polizzi.
“It’s really nice to not have to teach that, you know, that extra amount,” she said. “I can really give a lot more personalized attention in the classroom.”
The interior of a workspace located on the third floor of the Environmental Design building on Sept. 30, 2026. (CU Independent/Austin Coleman)
Changes to graduation ceremonies
In September 2025, the university announced that the graduation ceremonies between CMDI and the ENVD department would be combined beginning in May 2027. Seniors who graduated last spring were grandfathered in, and were the last class to graduate with their own ceremony and original stole colors.
The department will now use a turquoise stole, along with the rest of CMDI, and there will be one college-level recognition ceremony for every student in the college.
Upon discovering this, many ENVD students expressed their disdain for the college combining the two graduations.
Maxon Robbins, a senior architecture student and CMDI co-senator within CU Boulder Student Government’s legislative council, explained that losing ENVD’s graduation negatively impacts the ENVD student experience.
When the department had their own ceremony, they presented ENVD awards and Latin theses, and faculty were present and interacting with their students, he said.
“It’s super personal, and all the ENVD parents love that. I know my, especially, my mom’s an alum of ENVD, so she wants to go to an ENVD graduation,” Robbins said. “ And I think there’s concerns about if we have one big graduation, then ENVD won’t obviously get as much attention as it would if we had our own session because it’s only one of seven now, compared to the only part.”
Robbins and Schmitt, along with other ENVD students, met with Bergen and other faculty in September to discuss graduation and potential curriculum changes.
While the specific logistics of programming and celebrations for graduation are still under the works, ENVD Student Council and CMDI administration agreed that ENVD will be in full control of the content, structure and programming for the ENVD celebration, which will take place on the same day as the CMDI Ceremony.
The dean is still considering allowing all ENVD students to process at the same time together as a department, and is working through the logistics of the request, according to Robbins.
Last spring, ENVD students Emily Vanhoutan, Phoebe Seitz and Rachel Clapham created a petition for the continued use of ENVD’s lavender stoles and individual graduation ceremonies.
Clapham alleged that the ENVD students were told that many things wouldn’t change, including changes to curriculum and stole colors.
In response to commencement changes, over 200 ENVD students signed the physical petition, with more students signing a digital petition.
ENVD students continue to emphasize the importance of the commencement when it comes to identity within their college.
“The reason I came here is because you get such a small college feel in a large university,” Schmitt said.
She said that she has known all of her classmates and professors as if they were family for the past four years.
“There is this precedent and historical tradition of ENVD students are all together, they move all together, you do all these milestones together,” Schmitt said. “So I think taking it away is a very personal thing for a lot of students.
Upon announcement of the commencement changes, some students bought lavender stoles anyway.
“I knew when it got discontinued, like a lot of classmates, like myself, like bought purple stoles before they were discontinued,” Seitz said. “I’ve had classmates who have been like, ‘I’m just going to wear it under the red one, and then like, I’ll just take it off mid-ceremony.’”
Seitz, among other students, expressed that she wished that the university had been more upfront with the changes that would occur within the department. She said that during one of the informative sessions about the integration that was held, if they had told the students about the discontinuation of the stoles, they may not have created the petition.
“I feel like a big part of the reason we made it was because they told us, it’s going, like, don’t worry, it’s not going to happen, and then they’re just kind of quietly doing it,” Seitz said.
Robbins expressed a similar sentiment about the university’s communication with students regarding the integration.
“It’s been a very confusing process. I’d say I feel like a lot of people agree on that,” he said. “We weren’t given a great explanation on why we were merging, why this all was happening.”
Barwacz said that CMDI began communicating to students about changes to commencement in September 2025, citing a newsletter sent on Sept. 9, 2025.
The inside of a classroom in the Environmental Design building on Sept. 30, 2026. (CU Independent/Austin Coleman)
Changes to curriculum
Resulting from the integration, discussions have emerged regarding curriculum changes among faculty. According to the university, the integration did not directly change the curriculum or degree requirement, but allowed for an opportunity to align the department’s requirements with undergraduate academic norms in faculty-driven conversations.
Any future changes would not impact current students, but would apply to newly enrolled or transferred students.
Polizzi said that in order to adapt to new curriculum requirements, the department will need to remove 19 credits. The Environmental Design Curriculum Committee, made up of ENVD faculty, has worked on these credit changes for the past eight or nine months, she said.
New curriculum requirements would be applied regardless of whether ENVD remained in the Graduate School or integrated into another college because CU Boulder is launching a campus-wide Common Curriculum in fall 2027.
Additionally, within CMDI, the college requires a secondary area of study requirement, such as an additional major or adding a minor. The curriculum needed to be adjusted to accommodate that requirement, which Polizzi said many ENVD students have done in the past already.
Where it could disadvantage incoming students, she said, is through a lack of flexibility in credits. If a student doesn’t have much credit coming into the department, or if they spend a semester in a different area of study, they won’t have a lot of extra credits to use for electives.
“So, I think it’s good on paper. I think that it’s going to be, and I think it’s going to work for most students,” Polizzi said. “But unfortunately, I feel like the students that are the most disadvantaged, it’s going to be the most challenging for them.”
Current ENVD students have expressed concerns regarding the changing curriculum.
Schmitt said that many ENVD students don’t have a second area of study because the ENVD curriculum already takes up so much time.
“And then because of that, you’re like, okay, well, let’s get rid of ENVD classes, and then students are getting less training in the field they want to go into,” she said. “So it’s like it harms ENVD students because they’re going to be less qualified for the jobs that they want to apply to, but they have to change this at a, at a program level or department level because CMDI says so.”
ENVD students will continue to graduate with a Bachelor of Environmental Design.
Student government
Before the integration, both ENVD and CMCI had different student governments. Now, they are in the process of merging the two.
Environmental Design Student Government transformed into the Environmental Science Student Council. They will continue to carry out the same tasks and run the same elections, but Robbins explained that they won’t have as much power as they did before.
Student governments receive funding from the number of students in each college, and each student government is interconnected underneath CUSG.
“So even the student council wouldn’t be a part of that per se anymore. It would act more just as a club that looks over this building,” he said.
Now, funding for clubs related to ENVD will be directed to the College of Media, Design and Information’s Student Government, instead of the council specific to ENVD.
He noted that CMDISG is still working out the integration of the two student governments.
Changes to ENVD orientation
Schmitt is a first-year experience mentor, which is a program that ENVD has hosted to help incoming students navigate the department.
“ENVD is very specific. We have an LLC, very specific type of classes. You move as a group, so we have this built-in mentorship program to basically help people adjust to that,” she said.
First-year experience mentors also help run Admitted Student Day and orientation. But with the integration, there has been significant changes to ENVD’s part in Admitted Student Day.
Schmitt said that the integration process has created a more generalized experience for incoming ENVD students.
“A lot of people who come for Admitted Student Day to ENVD don’t have any idea what this program is like, and their experience at that day sort of tells them why this program is so unique and what it’s so special,” she said.
Before the integration, orientation for ENVD students was run by ENVD. According to Schmitt, there were two days for orientation. On the first day, prospective students would learn about the department, including available resources, the building and what classes are like. On the second day, they would learn about the first-year experience, and how mentorship works within the department.
Now, Schmitt said that ENVD’s orientation is compressed into one day, and that there is less capacity to speak about unique experiences within ENVD.
“And it’s like, your entire college experience is not going to be broken by your orientation experience, but it is part of this, like you’re building a community and you’re building an identity as an ENVD student,” Schmitt said. “And that’s something really, really special.”
She said that other first-year experience mentors had told her that their experience in ENVD’s Admitted Student Day before the integration was the reason they decided to come.
Polizzi said that the first and foremost concern for faculty is to deliver the right education and help students find jobs as they graduate.
“I think anytime there’s like something new, it’s really easy to be kind of afraid of that change…” she said. “If you kind of look at the history of our program within the University of Colorado, there has been kind of a significant change every five to 10 years, and so this feels like a, like a big change, and so it is scary.”
“But as, like, we’re kind of settling into it, I really don’t think it’s at the moment.”
Contact CU Independent Managing Editor Ainsley Coogan at ainsley.coogan@colorado.edu
