Jim Bradeen will be Colorado State University’s new associate vice president for CSU Spur strategy, facilitating Fort Collins campus activities as CSU’s local senior leader at Spur and working closely with CSU Spur campus leadership and stakeholders across the larger Denver-Metro community. He will start on Monday, April 4.
Bradeen comes to CSU from the University of Minnesota, where he’s served as a professor and head of the Department of Plant Pathology for the past eight years. He arrives with broad leadership experience, as the founder and co-director of the Stakman-Borlaug Center, part of the University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. An innovation platform, it focuses on interdisciplinary research, outreach, and student training, with an emphasis in sustainability
In this new position, initially funded by the CSU System, Bradeen will be responsible for operations and communications for CSU Fort Collins at the CSU Spur campus, serving as a liaison for Spur-based activities for all eight CSU colleges, as well as the Office of the Vice President for Research, Office of Engagement and Extension, and other divisions and units. In addition, he will drive strategy development, partnerships, communications and implementation of programs and services.
His charge also includes identifying and acting upon opportunities to build relationships and connect communities with CSU resources, working closely with CSU teams on inclusive excellence and community relations as they relate to Spur. He also will support engagement with business and industry and promote entrepreneurship.
“I’m excited to be part of Spur,” Bradeen said. “To me, Spur represents the very best of our land-grant promise to provide everyone with educational opportunities and research solutions for real-world problems.”
He noted that Spur will provide new ways to connect with traditional and nontraditional audiences around food, plant and animal health, and environmental sustainability. “Spur really underscores our CSU commitment to underserved communities,” he said.
During his time at Minnesota, his accomplishments included significant fundraising successes: more than $7 million to support the research, teaching, engagement/extension mission of his department from 2013-20; and more than $650,000 from PepsiCo and other public sources to design and launch the University of Minnesota Phenomics Initiative. He achieved this by fostering new research funding streams and enhanced grant-writing capacity, new public-private and public-nonprofit partnerships, and invigoration of development and donor-relations strategies.
Bradeen has been a frequent participant in a wide array of professional development workshops, seminars and programs, including two sponsored by the Big Ten Academic Alliance, and others focused on responding to sexual harassment, cultivating a unit culture of mutual respect and collegiality, best practices for mentoring junior faculty through promotion and tenure, and fundraising/development.
“We all look forward to working with Jim,” said Jenelle Beavers, CSU’s vice president for strategy. “As we move forward with the implementation of Courageous Strategic Transformation, adding his outstanding skills and experience to our team will assure that both Colorado State University here in Fort Collins and the CSU Spur campus in Denver will be able to expand and augment our collaborative efforts to serve Colorado and make the most of the limitless new opportunities ahead.”
