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Ilana Spiegel (i) Democrat
Residence: Englewood
Profession: Educational Consultant
Education: Wellesley College, BA in Economics and English; Columbia University MA in Education
Experience: Proud public school mom, classroom educator, lifelong advocate, current Regent
What are your top three priorities, if elected?
My priorities are affordability, access and student success, and protecting CU’s academic mission. First, I will keep working to control costs, expand aid, and strengthen transfer and concurrent-enrollment pathways, building on the CU Promise and the tuition guarantee. Second, I will expand access for underserved students and support mental health, disability access, safety, and belonging. I championed CU Denver’s automatic acceptance program in CD6 and hope to expand that program further. Third, I will defend academic freedom, faculty expertise, and research from political gamesmanship so CU remains an engine of opportunity for every Coloradan.
What is the greatest challenge facing the university, and how would you try to solve it?
CU’s greatest challenge is preserving its public mission amid financial pressure and political interference. Threats to funding and research can raise student costs, weaken faculty and staff support, and limit access. Politicized academic decisions undermine trust and scholarship. I would use budget and tuition oversight, strategic goals, leadership accountability, and protections for academic freedom to address these pressures. I will continue to prioritize student aid, scholarships, mental health, affordable pathways, and research, keeping decisions grounded in pragmatic, honest service to Colorado’s students, families, and taxpayers.
What do you see as the proper role of a regent in shaping policy at CU?
A regentap role is governance: setting policy and strategic direction, approving budgets, tuition, and degree programs, and holding university leaders accountable. Faculty guide curriculum and teaching methods; campus leaders administer the university. Regents should respect those responsibilities, protect academic freedom and free expression, and ensure policies are transparent, lawful, and serve students and the public. As former Governance Committee chair, I strengthened the feedback process for Board policy because durable decisions require students, faculty, staff, administrators, and taxpayers to be heard.
Joe Johnson Libertarian Party
Residence: Aurora
Profession: Business Owner
Education: High School
Experience: In 1982 I began a 30+ year career in Sales, Sales Management, Corporate training, culminating in the role of Partnership Development Director.
What are your top three priorities, if elected?
– Return education as the top priority in Higher Education. Sports, while valuable in student character development should no longer be job #1. With 94% of all college football programs ‘in the red,’ it is time to have a hard look at our priorities.
– Proper student body prioritization. Beginning in the 1980s, the government began a “College for All” mentality, wherein every High School student was guided toward attending college. The results have been disastrous. Graduating students have crushing debt, worthless degrees, and society with an epidemic trades shortage.
– Reduce government involvement in Higher Education. Building a system wherein money is taken by force from taxpayers and given to colleges and universities, no matter how well-intentioned, incentives naturally become askew.
What is the greatest challenge facing the university, and how would you try to solve it?
Supply and Demand is a law. So it is no surprise that when you focus K-12 education of filling colleges and Universities, incentives become unhinged. Today we have a dire shortage of tradesmen, worthless college degrees, and an entire generation wondering “what happened?” The cure is LESS government involvement in Higher education – NOT more.
What do you see as the proper role of a regent in shaping policy at CU?
Estimates vary, but range in the neighborhood of 40% of college/university funding comes from government (aka money taken from taxpayers). As such, there MUST be oversight. If elected, I will make it priority #1 to change the dialogue and keep in the forefront of the conversation exactly for whom it is that we work. Those who have not, or do not attend college but are forced to pay for it need a voice in how the system is run. The priorities of education must be returned to education, and ‘junk’ classes and degrees must be eliminated.
Veanessa Burbage did not return the questionnaire.
